The Integrated Effect of Quality and Maintenance Management on Sustainability in Saudi Manufacturing: Implications for Industrial Digital Transformation

Industrial digital transformation in manufacturing requires more than technology deployment; it also depends on organizational routines that coordinate process discipline, workforce learning, and asset reliability. Drawing on Dynamic Capabilities Theory, this study examines how Total Quality Management (TQM) and Total Productive Maintenance (TPM) jointly contribute to economic, environmental, and social sustainability in Saudi food manufacturing, with TPM modeled as an operational mediator. Survey data were collected from 470 distinct food manufacturing organizations across Saudi Arabia between December 2025 and February 2026. A reflective–formative higher-order model was estimated in SmartPLS 4 with the disjoint two-stage approach, 5000 bootstrap resamples, heterotrait–monotrait (HTMT) assessment with bootstrap confidence intervals, and importance–performance map analysis (IPMA). TQM positively affected sustainability performance (β = 0.327, p < 0.001) and predicted TPM (β = 0.592, p < 0.001); TPM, in turn, positively affected sustainability performance (β = 0.534, p < 0.001). The indirect TQM → TPM → sustainability pathway was significant (β = 0.316, 95% CI [0.274, 0.369]), indicating complementary partial mediation; the total effect of TQM on sustainability performance was 0.643. The model explained 59.8% of the variance in overall sustainability performance and 35.0% of the variance in TPM. IPMA identified safety, health and environment, self-maintenance, learning and creativity, and process management as recurring managerial priorities, with human-resource practices emerging as the leading priority for environmental performance. These findings position TQM–TPM integration as an organizational and human-capability foundation for sustainable industrial transformation: quality routines create the conditions for coordinated improvement, while maintenance capability translates them into reliable asset-centered practice. Because the study did not measure digital technology adoption or digital maturity, its contribution to industrial digital transformation is capability- and readiness-oriented rather than an estimate of the effects of specific digital technologies.