Evaluation of furniture quality and quality control practices in Ghana
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Date
2003-11-23
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Abstract
A study of 20 Furniture Manufacturing firms in Kurnasi and Accra as conducted to evaluate product quality in relation to raw material quality and existing quality control practices adopted by firms. Structured questionnaires were utilised and using product quality assessment models developed for this study, the identification of visual defects and dimensional accuracy of sample chairs were determined from randomly selected firms.
Results obtained identified the highest proportion of defects as rough surfaces and defective joints. Rough surfaces were observed for 81.7 percent of chairs from small-scale, 76.5 percent from medium-scale and 51 .7 percent for large- scale firms. The highest occurrence of other defects was observed on chairs from small-scale firms, and was slightly reduced for medium and large-scale firms. Dimensional accuracy was also improved for chairs from large-scale firms.
Improved product quality was found to be related to quality control schemes adopted by furniture firms. In a related study to determine customer perceptions of selected furniture quality attributes and their influence on purchase decisions, the most important attributes were the absence of defects (4.55), structural integrity (4.48), and wood species (4.43).
To improve product quality and industrial competitiveness it will be necessary for furniture manufacturers to adopt Total Quality Management systems and the use of appropriate technology.
Description
A thesis submitted to the Department of Wood Science and Technology, College of Agriculture and Natural Resources in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science, 2003