Diagnosis, Risk and Efficiency in the Implementation of TQM in Small and Medium Enterprises

This paper aims to highlight the specific issues relating to risks arising in small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in Romania, which are due to the decrease in the quality of manufacturing processes, making thus necessary to implement TQM to reduce or even eliminate inherent risks. Applying as a working tool the diagnosis analysis, the paper highlights the risks faced by SMEs in their relationships with customers or beneficiaries and with their direct suppliers. If in companies TQM implementation follows an already known protocol, in SMEs there are some specific implementation issues arising on the one hand because their organizational structure is simplified and therefore the staff is assigned multiple tasks, and on the other hand, the steps in the implementation of TQM are much simplified, the company registering a reduction or at best, an aggregation of functions. In addition to specific aspects of risk occurrence, the paper presents aspects aimed at enhancing economic efficiency resulting from the implementation of TQM, for specific cases: a company specializing in constructions.