Developing integration through total quality supply chain management

Interest in the extension of quality management programmes into customer‐supplier relationships in manufacturing is increasing. The potential for joint quality improvement initiatives to yield mutual benefits is increasingly being recognized as a natural development of internal total quality programmes. Reports on research with eight suppliers into the telecommunications and electronics industries. Documents a number of findings in relation to a number of propositions for effective total quality partnerships. Concludes that such partnerships are essentially integrating mechanisms for the development of joint customer‐supplier total quality management. Progress towards such partnerships is currently limited among the sample of companies studied.