A Knowledge Management Framework as Knowledge Bases Development Support to Professional Risk Assessment in SMEs

The market situation of the European countries is the following: 99% of companies in the EU are small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) – companies with a maximum of 250 employees and a maximal turnover of € 50 million. In the European Union (Europe have 23 million SMEs and 41 000 large companies) SMEs employ more than 65% of all employees. During past years, SMEs have created 80 % of the new jobs in the EU (IP/08/1003, Brussels, 25th June 2008). SMEs meet the multiple economic, technical and social functions, such as:  Generate the greater part of GDP in each country, usually between 55% 95%;  Provide jobs for majority of employment;  Produce a large percentage of the applicable technical innovations in the economy;  Have the highest market dynamism in the economy, a situation evidenced by the evolution of their number, the volume of turnover and size of employment, higher sensitivity to large companies;  Produce products and services at lower costs than large companies, the main factor causing this difference are lower costs;  Show high flexibility and adaptability to market requirements and changes favored by smaller size, faster decision-making process, specifically the entrepreneur and his direct involvement in ongoing activities;  Are the seeds for future large firms, particularly in new areas of the economy, etc. The SMEs research development activities, products development, new technologies implementation (see figure 1) presupposes knowledge and assumption of multiple risks. As a result of a new product development paradigm, there is a greater need for software tools to risk estimation. The risk evaluation sustains SMEs in the uncertainties elimination in the development strategy and management policies (see figure 2). Estimation, evaluation and control of the occupational risk represent prerequisites for grounding and for a continual support of the decision that has been previously taken on occupational safety in a working system (Vasilescu et al., 2008; Tint et al., 2009). However, in the last time, a lot of research in the field of knowledge management is dedicated to large companies or international concerns and the small and medium-sized