Improvement of the Production Quality of the Textile Industries in Madagascar by the Knowledge Engineering

Abstract

The textile industry in Madagascar has a very important weight for the Malagasy economic situation. It is the sector that contributes the most to job creation as well as to export. There are two main categories of factories: free zone companies that are moving towards export and small and medium-sized units who produce for local consumption. The lack of technical competence of the majority of the employees constitutes a common block for the two factories category. The failure is related to the low employee’s education level. This gap questions the competitiveness of textile enterprises in Madagascar at national and global level. Moreover, quality is one of the critical success factors that must be mastered by textile companies to be able to dominate the world of competition. This paper suggests a managerial strategy, the Knowledge management, as lever of quality production improvement. It has as objective the capitalization, enhancement and improvement of the company's knowledge while placing at the center the human resources. These are the sources of knowledge and the challenge is to formalize and share expert is know-how. Nonaka’s model has been exploited to achieve knowledge transfer. MASK method is used to rationalize Nonaka's knowledge management cycle. It is recommended that textile companies in Madagascar integrate knowledge management into their management system in order to optimize production quality, productivity and stimulate innovation.