Quality Management System as an integrator in global multi-site organizations

Research Project, 2022 – 2028

This industrial PhD student project focused on Quality Management Systems (QMS) as an integrator in a global multi-site organization. The difference between a single-site and multi-site QMS is simply that a multi-site QMS cover more than one site. Thus, a challenge is to balance the QMS’s required standardization and the need for site contextualization.

The transition to a multi-site QMS can be contextualized to sites’ specific characteristics especially relating to an either coercive or enabling view of QMS. Further the transition can be step-wise through several multi-site certifications based on clusters of sites with high similarities. Such clustering need to move beyond motivational drivers for QMS, e.g. by adding a consideration of perceived proximity to headquarters.