The Final Conference of the EU funded project “EU Support to Introduction of Quality Management Systems in BiH (EU-QMS BiH)” was held today at Congress & Event Centre “Terme” in Ilidža-Sarajevo.
The purpose of the Final Conference was to mark the end of the successfully implemented EU-QMS BiH project by presenting its activities and the results. The project’s broad objective was to generate economic growth and employment by strengthening competitiveness of the small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) through the introduction of the Quality Management Systems. With assistance of the EU experts and local QMS consultants, out of 271 received applications, 100 “pilot” enterprises were selected as the most prospective and successfully undertook free preparation for quality management system certification in accordance with ISO 9001:2008 standard.
Martin Schieder, Head of Operations Section for Economic Development, Natural Resources and Infrastructures at the EU Delegation to BiH said: “SMEs are vital to the economy of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The large number of applications received by the project shows high interest among SMEs in BiH for improvement of their business processes. Through introduction of QMS and its certification, SMEs will become competitive in highly demanding export markets, which shall lead to growth of productivity and employment, directly improve local economy and living standard of the whole society. The work performed within the EU-QMS project should also create a long term positive impact on the business sector in BiH and bring improvements to SMEs, by reducing operational costs, better trained and educated employees, increased efficiency, better customer satisfaction and improved product quality.”
During the project’s implementation, 443 people from government, public and private companies, experts and consultants have received training in QMS for SMEs, resulting in a long term positive impact on the business sector’s improvement. Maria Di Florio, EU-QMS project Team Leader said: “The project will bring numerous benefits to the society, not just to the SMEs. The fact that some businesses will continue their cooperation with the assigned consultants after the completion of the project provides further evidence that it was successfully implemented. The more local entrepreneurs qualify for the competitive environment of the demanding foreign markets, the more the BiH economy will recover successfully and continue to growth”.
Maja Bralovic-Smith, Director of the Civil Engineering Company ‘MIBRAL’ from Sarajevo stressed that one of the most important values of the QMS is the quality and added: “A high standard of quality is the key to our past and future success. Implementing ISO 9001 standard will help us to better measure the quality of our services and assure that we are continuously improving.”
EU-QMS BiH is a 24 month project financed by the European Union from the Instrument for Pre-accession Assistance (IPA 2009) to the tune of more than 1.8 million Euros. The Project was implemented by D’Appolonia S.p.A. in consortium with IBF and TIM Know How.
