QM-Light, a proposed model for Quality Management in SMEs. Part 1: Developing the model

Implementing Quality Management, while beneficial to all organizations, may be challenging. As many business excellence (BE) models like the EFQM-model are initially developed for larger organizations, implementing these models are challenging in SMEs (Sternad et al., 2017). Nevertheless, SMEs generate employment and contribute to innovation and sustainability making them crucial to economies around the world (OECD, 2017). This paper proposes a model, referred to as ‘QM light’ that helps SMEs to benefit from QM. It is a model that considers SMEs in all sectors and the importance of cooperation between people, processes, and systems. The authors seek to answer key questions: 1) what makes the BE-models complex for SMEs to apply? and 2) how can a ‘QM light’ model improve the applicability for SMEs? In this part, we introduce the developed model while part II will introduce the empirical evidence after implementing this proposed model.