Quality has been a key issue to manufacturers. Many distinguished scholars have defined quality with profound insight. Korean firms struggle to make better products to fulfil requirements and satisfy customers. Korean industries have implemented quality management from Japan in early 70s. Statistical quality control, QCC (Quality Control Circle), and total quality management have also been introduced in succession. Chief executive officers, managers, and field employees have been aware of the importance of quality since then. This quality movement force workers to improve quality. They have to maintain the quality of products and compete with foreign products. Korean industries were able to compete with foreign industries in price. However, Korean firms now have to compete in quality as well as price. ISO (International Organization for Standardization) was established and industries around world have started to implement standardized systems depending on their need. ISO 9000 has continuously been revised and firms around world started to register a ISO 9000 certificate. Today’s quality competitiveness gets more deeply involved. KSA (Korean Standard Association) have launched QCAS (Quality Competitiveness Assessment System) since 1997. Up until now recent status of QCAS have been reported but the characteristics of QCAS results have not been analyzed. In this article we examine the QCAS results of 41 firms in 2014. QCAS consisted of 13 subsections : strategy and management system, organization culture and development of human resource, information management, quality system, customer satisfaction, management achievement, TPM, logistics, product development and technology, PL, QCC, SQC/SPC, and reliability. We performed one way ANOVA to discover the difference among the levels of firm size, business type, and quality hall of fame using the total scores of 13 subsections resulted from QCAS. We also analyzed the scores of 13 individual subsections of QCAS to see if there is any differences based on firm size and business type. We interpret the results and implication of analysis and finally draw a conclusion.

• 박동준(부경대학교 통계학과) | Dong Joon Park Corresponding Author