SME Week was an opportunity for Small and Medium Sized Enterprises (SMEs) to learn how standards can help their business, it was held in May 2009. SME Week is part of a Europe-wide campaign to promote entrepreneurship and to inform entrepreneurs about support available for them at European, national and local levels. It provides an opportunity for SMEs to have access to an array of information, advice, support and ideas to help them develop their activities. To kick-off the week, the European Committee for Standardization (CEN) and the European Committee for Electrotechnical Standardization (CENELEC), supported a conference entitled 'Better access of SMEs to Standardization'. During this conference, SMEST (Small and Medium sized Standards Toolkit) was introduced. It is one of several initiatives CEN and CENELEC have underway to assist SMEs. Summer and autumn 2009 will see SMEST presented at eleven workshops in those countries that recently joined the EU. For more information about SMEST and the dates of these workshops, visit the SMEST web site.
To provide a framework to address the concerns some SMEs have with access to standards, CEN and CENELEC have an initiative entitled CEN-CENELEC SME Access to Standardization Project, led by BSI. The objective of this project is to recommend practical actions to SMEs, in order to improve the value of standardization to SMEs and reduce the financial impact. CEN and CENELEC recently published a Guide to encourage SMEs to join the standardization process. It explains the ways standards and standardization can help cut costs, attract new customers and improve efficiency as well as encourage SMEs to join the standardization process. A copy can be found here :
SMEs and Standards: Guide to the European standardization process
Return to Summer 2009 Committee e-newsletter
