Purpose: System reliability optimisation in today’s world is critical to ensuring customer satisfaction, businesses competitiveness, secure and uninterrupted delivery of services and safety of operations. Among many systems configurations, complex systems are the most difficult to model for...

TQM is a philosophy mainly dominated by large companies. Small businesses are lagging behind larger ones when it comes to introducing and adopting new managerial philosophies and advanced technology. Many small companies have stopped at quality system certification, such as ISO 9000, in their...

The proposed framework for TQM implementation in SMEs described in this paper centres on three main elements: the “quality toolbox”, “general methodology” and the “central co‐ordinating body”. It is believed that the adoption of TQM in SMEs must not be a fully blown approach but a...

Most of the literature on knowledge management (KM) and its application has, until recently, been centered on large organizations. Pertinent issues in small businesses have to a large extent been neglected. However, small businesses do not necessarily share the same characteristics and ideals as...

Purpose – To investigate the critical success factors (CSFs) for adopting knowledge management (KM) in small and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs) – an area that has, to date, received very little attention in the literature. Design/methodology/approach – A survey instrument comprising 11...

Describes the methodology and findings of four industrial case studies conducted on the implementation of TQM in automotive small and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs). Interviews were conducted to answer key issues which were felt to be crucial to this study. In addition, the case studies also...

Purpose – Reliability is a major quality characteristic which has grown in importance as products/systems have become ever more sophisticated. Neglecting it could spell great losses in terms of patronage, revenue, and even lives. The purpose of this paper is to present a multi‐criteria...