Abstract

Recently, Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) have become recognized as an important driver of global economic growth and innovation. This phenomenon is particularly evident in the MENA region, where small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) make a significant contribution to the businesses. SMEs offer significant benefits in terms of job creation, revenue generation, and fostering economic diversity. Although SMEs have a vital contribution in the economy of the MENA region, SMEs face many challenges that hinder their development and long-term viability. Focusing on these challenges is very important for fostering a vibrant and resilient economic environment. The objective of this thesis examines the difficulties encountered by SMEs in MNA region specially in Egypt. It specifically explores how Total Quality Management (TQM) methods may effectively tackle these challenges by tailoring specific TQM strategies for each sector of SMEs. The analysis has focused on four specific industries: Food and Beverage (F&B), Retail, Manufacturing, and Fintech. Two surveys were conducted to identify and analyze the key challenges and the critical success factors (CSFs) influencing SME performance. The first survey requests SME’s Owners to rate the impact of seven potential challenges on their SMEs, while the second survey evaluates the importance of various CSFs. The data were analyzed using descriptive statistics and linear regression to provide insights into the most pressing challenges and key success factors for the SMEs. The findings of challenges survey highlight that managerial capacities, customer satisfaction and lack of trainings are perceived as the most significant challenges with the highest means while the lowest challenge affecting them is supplier management. Also, the regression analysis further underscores the direct effect of the seven challenges on the overall performance; having a P value less than 0.05 which means that they considered statistically significant predictors of performance. In addition, the second- and third-degree effectiveness of the challenges were statistically significant if they got combined together. These findings suggest that SMEs should prioritize the seven challenges to improve their performance. The ANOVA test that was applied on the CSFs survey highlight that CSFs Customer Satisfaction, Leadership, Teamwork and Employee Involvement, Supplier Management and Process Management have P-values greater than 0.05 indicates that there are no significant model terms which means that all sectors agree these factors are critical and deeply needed factor to maintain their sustainability. It also shows that CSFs Training and Education, Benchmarking and Quality Information and Performance Measurement have P-value is less than 0.050. This indicates that the model terms are significant, which means that there is a difference in the importance of this factor across different sectors. Threfore, by integrating the level of importance of the CSFs per sector with the different TQM approached, we can conclude that Manufacturing and Fintech SMEs can mainly use Deming’s management approaches to address their specific challenges and leverage key success factors to enhance their overall performance and sustainability. On the other hand, F&B can utilize lean while the retail one can tailor both 5s methodology and lean to maintain their sustainability and growth.

School

School of Sciences and Engineering

Department

Mechanical Engineering Department

Degree Name

MS in Mechanical Engineering

Graduation Date

Fall 12-1-2024

Submission Date

9-4-2024

First Advisor

Dr.Ahmed Mohib

Committee Member 1

Dr.Tamer Adel

Committee Member 2

Dr.Mohamed Badran

Extent

74 p.

Document Type

Master's Thesis

Institutional Review Board (IRB) Approval

Not necessary for this item

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