Quality in the Public Procurement process
There are number of reasons to explain the challenging conditions for Swedish transportation industry to provide high quality services to their customers. Some of these are as follow:
· The Swedish law of Public Procurement Regulates that favors with the bidder with the lowest price.
· The Swedish law of public Procurement regulates does not allow previous relationships with certain suppliers/operators.
· Contract is written in advance by the purchasing authority, so there are few possibilities to negotiate about the contract and adjust its contents after it has been signed.
This focus on price has resulted in services being reduced and depleted for the passengers of public transportation. Currently, eight out of Sweden’s 26 PTAs have adopted systematic approaches to evaluating quality in public procurement. There are three alternative models for evaluating tenders. . Due to the limited experience in managing quality as a factor in public procurement, this paper uses three perspectives to explore four dimensions of how to integrate quality through the use of a self-assessment model in the public procurement process. The four dimensions are:
· What model to use;
· The balance between price and quality;
· How tenders perform their self-assessments; and
· The use of internal and/or external examiners.
Organizational approach to Total Quality management
The Malaysian Administrative Modernization and Management Planning Unit (MAMPU) has outlined Total Quality Management (TQM) by means of seven core principles:
(1) Top management commitment
(2) Strategic quality planning
(3) Customer focus
(4) Training and recognition
(5) Enhancing teamwork
(6) Performance measurement
(7) Quality assurance
Malaysian organizations are encouraged to apply these core principles in order to attain competitive advantage in the marketplace. The present study has made an attempt to survey the level of awareness and implementation of these principles in a typical Malaysian organization.TQM is basically a long-term process for continuous improvement. Over 90% of the staff of AHM is aware of TQM and its basic principles and they know that their top management is committed to implement TQM at their organization. However, a sizeable percentage of respondents (37.5%) view that the TQM programs in the company have not been successful and they have provided the reasons for that. The management of the company must look into those factors that are lacking in the system of the organization. By and large, the employees are upbeat about the implementation of TQM programs at AHM and they will continuously support the programs.
