Investigating the Adoption Barriers of Total Quality Management in Production with DEMATEL

The customer-focused total quality management (TQM) approach means providing better performance and higher-quality products and services for the production ecosystem where the customer is at the center. This study aims to identify TQM barriers and reveal a cause-and-effect relationship between these barriers for effective implementation in production. The barriers are explored through opinions from academics and industry experts and then analyzed using the DEMATEL method. Because of expert opinions and literature compilation, TQM barriers that have the potential to create obstacles in production are grouped into six categories. The analysis has shown that in order to eliminate all barriers, the lack of TQM implementation must first be eliminated. Lack of organizational culture emerges as the second most important barrier. The study results present a holistic solution approach by revealing the relationship between barriers. DEMATEL offers effective solutions requiring much less participation than structural analysis models. The method is quite easy to calculate and does not require intense effort. The study serves as a theoretical and practical observation tool for managers in terms of understanding the reasons for unsuccessful TQM practices in production. Additionally, our model, which reveals the cause-effect relationship between production and TQM barriers, is complementary to previous models that only detected significant relationships between barriers. © The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2024.