QUALITY CONTROL MEASURES IN THE CLOTHING INDUSTRY: CASE STUDY IN THE KETA MUNICIPALITY

ABSTRACT 

The study set out to unearth the quality control practices of clothing manufacturers in the Keta municipality of the Volta Region of Ghana. It further sought to assess the challenges that these manufacturers face in their bid to ensure quality in their production and come out with measures that could be used to mitigate the situation. The cross-sectional descriptive research methodology was adopted using a case study approach in examining the quality control measures of the clothing industry. The researcher selected the management and operational staff of eight (8) garment manufacturing companies in Keta through purposive and random sampling techniques. It was seen from the data that, clothing manufacturing firms faced a lot of challenges in their bid to ensure quality. Some of these were the use of obsolete and inadequate machinery and technology by the local clothing manufacturers which result in inefficiency and high cost of production. Also, it was seen that the garment manufacturing industry is dominated by small scale enterprises and as such, it is difficult to apply large scale quality control measures in such companies. Notwithstanding these challenges, clothing manufacturing firms had quality control policies in place and showed commitment to these policies which however lacked comprehensive customer satisfaction measurement. The study recommends that garment manufacturing firms should coordinate and form associations to educate and train potentials on quality control skills to oversee the quality control in the firms.  Again, it is recommended that clothing manufacturers should develop schemes that will enable them to measure customer satisfaction and managers must conduct periodic refresher courses/training for their staff to improve on their knowledge in quality assurance.