Abstract

The aim of this study is to determine the effective factors, the difficulties encountered, and the attainable levels of the objectives in the certification process of small and medium-sized enterprises with the ISO 9000 Quality Management Systems (QMS) certificate in Turkey textile sector. The study was carried out by reaching out to the managers that managed certification process in companies. The data collected via questionnaires were analyzed in SPSS 11.0 (SPSS, Inc., Chicago, Illinois) environment. The screening method was used in the research and the study group consisted of 108 small and medium scale enterprises (SMEs) which were randomly selected. The assessments were fulfilled according to frequency, mean, standard variation related to the findings obtained from the responses given to the survey questions. However, in order to determine whether there were differences in the assessments according to satisfaction variable after ISO 9000 QMS certification, one-way variation analysis (ANOVA) was made up. Tukey-HSD test was used to determine in which groups the possible differences belong. Significance level was taken as p<.05. When examining the certification objectives in organizations, for the fact that many of them have the high mean shows that the expectations associated with certification are high. However, the mean scores of the difficulties encountered in certification are low. From this, it can be stated that the certification process was successful. When evaluating the benefits that the certification provided for the organizations, it was seen that the benefit obtained was parallel with the objectives. Also, it was seen that the mean scores were high and that the expectations have been met here, too.

Key words: ISO 9000 QMS, SMEs, Turkish textile companies.