ICT driven quality improvement initiatives in small and medium enterprises

Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) must undertake continuous improvement of their existing processes, products and services. They must introduce products and services with extended capabilities to create more value for their customers. In a knowledge based economy, use of quality measures and tools is bound to bring the same competitive advantage to small and medium sized enterprises as brought to large enterprises worldwide. Use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) to drive the quality initiatives is required as a key parameter to define the SME´s strategic objectives. This paper focuses on quality initiatives implemented by SMEs in Pakistan and explores potential for their implementation using information technology. Data has been collected from 38 SMEs and state of ICT adoption is studied. Measures of quality and use of quality tools are investigated for both their importance and practical use through ICT.