An interpretative structural modelling approach to analysing root causes of defective jobs: A case study in an automobile service industry

ABSTRACT: This paper addresses, explores, and analyses one of the critical productivity and quality problems in the automobile service industry, which is defective jobs or rework due to bad repairs through a case study conducted in Cebu City, Philippines. The paper determined 22 potential causes of the quality problem through the focus group discussion. An interpretative structural modelling is adopted to model the interrelationships of the identified causes in a hierarchical structure. The study has two primary outputs: 1) a list of potential causes of defective jobs; 2) a digraph presenting the interrelationships of the determined causes. The results of this study will significantly contribute to the literature as it provides scholars insights as well as a methodology to analyse quality problems in a causal analysis environment. Moreover, it will also be beneficial to practitioners as it provides them with essential managerial insights that can be useful in practice.

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