Abstract:
Over the last two decades, quality of products and service has become a cardinal priority for
business organizations irrespective of their size and type. Accordingly, this research work makes
an assessment and improvement of product quality on Small and Medium Scale Metal
Manufacturing Enterprises located at Mizan-Aman town, Southern region of Ethiopia. A brief
introduction is given on the fundamental concepts of quality with reference to recent literature.
The research was mainly carried out through direct observation on the enterprises, data collecting
employing questionnaire survey and interview, analyzing the data, result and discussion of the
analysis and conclusion. To undertake this research a sample size of 15 Small and Medium Scale
Metal Manufacturing Enterprises were chosen. The enterprises are engaged on manufacturing
furniture items, construction items, grinding agriculture tool, maintenance work, modification
spare part etc. Among those enterprises six of them which have engine lathe machine were
specifically taken for the case study of maintaining grinding flour mill shaft is one of the major
works to be performed by the enterprises day to night. The improper maintenance of the shafts
on the engine lathe machine, too much queue waiting for maintenance, and failure of them
within short period of time is the critical problem with them. In the case study, those enterprises
which have engine lathe machine for maintenance of grinding flour mill shaft were analytically
examined. According to the findings from the questionnaire and case study, improper uses of
cutting speed, improper cutting parameter, improper machine alignment and inadequate
knowledge about limit, fits, and tolerance between the mating parts or applying inappropriate
and random dimensioning, improper welding process, improper maintenance processes and
sequences are the factors for the improper maintenance of the shaft. These factors could
contribute for the improvement system of product quality. Furthermore, the study revealed that
the enterprises should give due attention for their product quality problem through giving and
preparing continuous training for employees. Since most of the employees of SMMEs are
graduated from TVET Institutes, evaluating institutes training result should also be a critical
factor for the product quality improvement effort. Besides, all type of grinding flour mill which
work on electricity, wind, water and petrol have similar maintenance shaft regardless of the
materials used i.e. coffee, raise, wheat, maize, teff, beans etc. The finding of this study, therefore,
can be used as a lead for future research works in the field through evaluating the number of
grinding mill in each Woreda, Zone, and State.