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Quality management systems have become almost compulsory in many branches of industry in the last few years. A similar development seems to be possible for environmental management. In addition, maintenance of industrial health and safety standards must be considered by the management of any company. A main problem arise from this analysis: how is it possible to transfer and to apply these concepts to SMEs? The Euro Info Centre EIC/IT 378 charged the Research Centre for Quality and Environment of the University of Padova to conceive and realise a guide for SMEs aiming at the integration of the environmental management systems with the quality and the occupational health and safety ones. A second tool, an IMS self‐assessment guide, is now under realisation in order to achieve a European validation of the proposed model.

The purpose of this paper is to propose a cost-effective, time-saving and easy-to-use failure modes and effects analysis (FMEA) system applied on the quality control of supplied products. The traditional FMEA has been modified and adapted to fit the quality control features and requirements. The paper introduces a new and revised FMEA approach, where the “failure concept” has been modified with “defect concept.”

The typical FMEA parameters have been modified, and a non-linear scale has been introduced to better evaluate the FMEA parameters. In addition, two weight functions have been introduced in the risk priority number (RPN) calculus in order to consider different critical situations previously ignored and the RPN is assigned to several similar products in order to reduce the problem of complexity.

A complete procedure is provided in order to assist managers in deciding on the critical suppliers, the creation of homogeneous families overcome the complexity of single product code approach, in RPN definition the relative importance of factors is evaluated.

This different approach facilitates the quality control managers acting as a structured and “friendly” decision support system: the quality control manager can easily evaluate the critical situations and simulate different scenarios of corrective actions in order to choose the best one. This FMEA technique is a dynamic tool and the performed process is an iterative one. The method has been applied in a small medium enterprise producing hydro massage bathtub, shower, spas and that commercializes bathroom furniture. The firm application has been carried out involving a cross-functional and multidisciplinary team.