Performance measures of ISO 9001 certified and non-certified manufacturing companies

Abstract

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to compare ISO 9001 certified and non-certified manufacturing companies with regard to performance measures, both financial and non-financial. Design/methodology/approach – A research study was carried out in 140 Greek manufacturing companies by means of a questionnaire. The questionnaire was sent by e-mail and it was requested that it should be answered by a company representative. Exploratory factor analysis is applied in order to extract the latent factors of performance measures. The differences between the ISO 9001 certified and non-certified manufacturing companies are determined through non-parametric tests such as the χ2-test and the Mann-Whitney U-test. Findings – The ISO 9001 certified manufacturing companies significantly outperform the non-certified with regard to product quality, customer satisfaction, operational, market and financial performance. This is evident in a business environment where an economic downturn and financial crisis dominates. Research limitations/implications – The sub-samples of the responding ISO 9001 certified and non-certified manufacturing companies are small sized and they are limited to small- and medium-sized enterprises. The subjective character of the data collected through the company representatives involves the risk of receiving biased responses regarding the performance measures. The above limitations suggest future research recommendations. Practical implications – The increased performance measures of the ISO 9001 certified manufacturing companies may motivate the non-certified ones to implement the ISO 9001 standard and apply for the certification in order to increase their performance and withstand the current economic downturn and financial crisis. The present study may also stimulate manufacturing companies to adopt traditional and modern benchmarking techniques, in an additional effort to improve their businesses and competitiveness. Originality/value – The present study compares performance measures of ISO 9001 certified and non-certified manufacturing companies operating under unprecedented circumstances due to the current economic downturn and financial crisis.

The financial impact of a withdrawn ISO 9001 certificate

“…The large majority of studies in Table 1 conclude that ISO 9001 certification has a positive and significant impact on firms' financial performance (Simmons and White, 1999;Chow-Chua et al, 2003;Mokhtar et al, 2005;Naveh and Marcus, 2007;Nair and Prajogo, 2009;Pantouvakis and Dimas, 2010;Gómez et al, 2013;Psomas et al, 2013;Fatima, 2014;Psomas and Kafetzopoulos, 2014;Chatzoglou et al, 2015) and on firms' stock prices (Docking and Dowen, 1999;Beirão and Cabral, 2002;Nicolau and Sellers, 2002;Corbett et al, 2005;Sharma, 2005;McGuire and Dilts, 2008). Despite the fact that some of the longitudinal studies have found supporting evidence in favor of causality between ISO 9001 certification and financial performance (e.g., Corbett et al, 2005;Benner and Veloso, 2008), other studies note that the positive correlation between these two variables does not mean causality between them (see Heras et al, 2002b;Dick et al, 2008).…”

Do Sustainable Procurement Practices Improve Organizational Performance?

“…We considered relevant aspects and approaches for this study. The measures of organizational performances are divided into two categories: financial and nonfinancial performance measures [35,36,39,40]. The performance standards were shown to have high reliability (Cronbach's alpha values ranged from 0.77 to 0.89) and content and construct validity as evidenced by convergent validity (factor loadings of respective measured items >0.50) and discriminant validity (AVE > r 2 ).…”

“…The first section covered the company's profile and the second section consisted of 16 items on SP practices and the third section consisted of 13 items on benefits (financial and nonfinancial) measured on a 1-5 Likert scale (5 represented strongly agree, most important, or strong improvement, whereas 1 represented strongly disagree, least important, or strong deterioration and 3 represented neutral, modest or fair) to assess the impact of implementation of SP practices on organizational performances. The nonfinancial performances (benefits) of the organization were generally covered by three major areas namely, local and international business performance, quality and operational performance, and social and environmental performance [35,36].…”

Managing Manufacturing Complexity Drivers on Performance – An Initial Study

“…Manufacturing industries in pursuit of cost and time reduction without decreasing product quality [17,[19][20]. Improved product quality and on-time delivery result in improved performance [21]. Antony et al, [22] implemented Six Sigma to ensure there was an improvement in the on-time delivery which was able to cost reduction.…”