Understanding the influence of ISO 9001 certification on SMEs performance: two Portuguese case studies

Abstract

Considering the importance of small and medium-sized businesses in the economy and that the majority of quality management systems (QMS) implemented in SMEs are based on the requirements of the ISO 9001 standard, with this work our focus is on studying the influence of ISO 9001 standard certification on performance in SMEs. The data was collected through interviews in two SMEs. The study showed that the implementation of an ISO 9001-based QMS has distinct effects on the performance of the SMEs studied. While the implementation of such QMS had significantly improved the performance in one of the companies, in the other, the few changes brought by certification were in terms of external image and organization of documentation and may not be deemed to affect performance significantly.

Keywords

• Performance
• Quality management systems
• ISO 9001
• SME