Identifying Critical Quality Management Content on Undergraduate Courses Through Industry Feedback

In a world of increasingly competitive industries, any advantage that companies can reach is important for their permanence in the market. Quality management is an area that allows companies to achieve certain economic benefits in the long term, which is why companies are willing to invest in the development of these practices. In turn, universities have been updating the contents of their courses with the intention of preparing better professionals who can meet the demands of knowledge that companies need from them, this is also the case of quality management, an area that today plays a key role in the performance of organizations. The following research presents the development of improvement proposals to the engineering courses of the Politecnico di Torino and the Universidad Adolfo Ibañez dedicated to the teaching of quality management concepts and techniques. Through the Politecnico di Torino web site for survey development, two surveys were designed. The first questionnaire was distributed to all companies that have educational agreements in force with these universities in order to measure their level of development in terms of quality management, while the second questionnaire was distributed to students who have recently finished their studies and to those in their last academic year in order to measure the level of knowledge about this subject. Once the responses were obtained, a comparative percentage analysis and a statistical analysis were carried out in order to distinguish the techniques that could be included in the engineering courses, as well as certain actions that could be recommended to increase the level of awareness of students in both countries. Additionally, hypotheses about the concern and level of development of quality management were studied in relation to the country, type of product, size and geographic scope of the companies, as well as an analysis of the critical success factors that companies identified as important when developing continuous improvement projects.?? The results of the research indicate that, as a proposal, one methodology and one quality management tool could be included in the engineering courses of the Politecnico di Torino, while the recommendations to the Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez are composed of two methodologies and seven tools. Regarding the hypotheses, the study concludes that: Italian, manufacturing and large companies have higher level of development in terms of quality management compared to Chilean, service/hybrid and small organizations, respectively. On the other hand, the geographical scope of the companies is not influential in the level of development about quality management. Finally, the critical success factors were analyzed by the number of times they were selected as critical, among which "Cultural Change and Leadership" and "Employee Training and Education" stood out, factors that occupied positions within the top three in both countries.