Management tools for SMEs

To survive and develop their activities in an increasingly competitive environment, small and medium sized enterprises have to mange issues like cost reduction and continuous performance improvement. Considering that, a research project was carried out to determine the special characteristics of these enterprises and to identify the generic issues that act as barriers to their growth. The output of the research project was an integrated management system guide for small and medium sized enterprises, which incorporates tools addressing management areas critical for small and medium sized enterprises' growth, using quality, safety and environmental issues to focus them. These process-based tools can be implemented also separately and they contribute the preparation of these enterprises for ISO 9001 and ISO 14001 certification. The partial implementation of the tools by two small and medium sized enterprises gave positive validation of the concepts.