Improving the materials supply system in small-sized building firms

This paper presents a research study aimed at developing a method for improving the materials supply system in small-sized building firms using total quality management (TQM) principles. The study involved three companies from the Brazilian building industry, which worked cooperatively through several stages of TQM implementation. The proposed method is based on simple well-known quality techniques for problem identification, analysis and solving, such as flowchart, brainstorming, checklist and Pareto diagram. The paper points out some of the difficulties in applying such techniques and principles in small-sized building firms and discusses some typical problems found in materials supply systems of such companies in Brazil.