Venturing Down the TOM Path for SME's

TON VAN DER WIELE IS DIRECTOR OF THE Strategic Quality Management Institute at Erasmus University, Rotterdam, the Netherlands, and Alan Brown is Director of the Small and Medium Enterprise Research Centre at Edith Cowan University, Perth, Western Australia. SMEs face considerable pressure to gain ISO 9000 series quality system certification if they are suppliers to major organisations and governments; furthermore, if they seek to operate in certain markets they may also require certification. To what extent, however, do they adopt broader quality concepts such as total quality management and that as outlined in the quality award models? This paper explores these questions by examining factors which distinguish between those SMEs which focus on narrow concepts of quality such as ISO 9000 and those who move to more holistic approaches such as TQM. The analysis is based on two questionnaire surveys in Australia, one to all ISO 9000 certified organisations in Western Australia and the other to all members of the Australian Quality Council. A limited number of semi- structured interviews were also used to provide case study material of experiences of small companies. The research indicated that SMEs, albeit not large numbers, do use broader quality concepts other than ISO 9000. Findings suggest that two groups of SMEs can be differentiated on the basis of their approach to quality. There are the just ISO' group who generally focus on ISO 9000 because of market pressures while the 'quality progressive' or enlightened group view quality in a more holistic manner. The latter group tend to adopt broader notions of quality which includes TQM and quality award models as a framework for their quality activities. These two groups can be differentiated on issues such as: employee involvement, self-assessment, process improvement and capability and assessing process performance.