Excellence models, management systems, and their integration in SME : case study - "SME Leader" and "SME excellence" located at the municipaliity of Vila Nova Famalicão - Portugal

Abstract

The use, by organizations, of business excellence models has been winning more notoriety as they have several benefits. In turn, the application of management systems standards, through the implementation of the corresponding management systems, aims to enhance internal and external efficiency and ffectiveness, in terms of responses due to customers and other interested parts. The developed investigation aimed to obtain relevant information that, in various perspectives, would enable the characterization of the excellence models and management systems and their integration and lean tools used by the “leader or excellence small and medium enterprises” located at the municipality of Vila Nova de Famalicão, north of Portugal. The investigation, whose strategy and method took into account the case study, was supported on a survey by questionnaire that was carried out near 163 small and medium enterprises from different business activities. The proposed approach is supported on the performed literature review tha include the concepts of business excellence models, management systems, integrated management systems, lean and quality tools, among others. As main findings that we highlight are: globally, the responding small and medium enterprises (31.67% of the total inquired) use the following management models: SWOT analysis, alanced scorecard, and the EFQM model, and less frequently the PEX-SPQ, and BCG matrix. From the lean tools, the most used by the respondents small and medium enterprises are: 5S, Kaizen, and Lean manufacturing. The least used are: Six-sigma and Lean office. In terms of management systems standards, the most used are: ISO 9001, ISO 14001, and ISO 45001, and the least used are: ISO 56002, ISO 50001, and ISO 22000. In face of the literature review and for our better knowledge, this work provides new knowledge, from the outset with regard to the potential characterization of the “leader and excellence small and medium enterprises”.