The Integration Dr Blog

Some people assume that, because I’m “The Integration Doctor”, that I advocate integration of systems in every circumstance.  People who don’t know me assume that… those who DO know me, know that I try to analyze every situation as unique, and based my recommendations based on that analysis.  Yes, integration is a good idea in many cases; let’s spend a few minutes talking about the times when integration may not be the ‘right’ answer:

1)      When the systems are too disparate to combine. Some systems are not set up to be combined easily – one area may be under regulatory control, for example, while other areas are not.  In these cases, it may become too cumbersome to combine these systems (put unnecessary records and requirements on an otherwise well running system, as example); in that case, the organization may choose to keep the systems separate.

2)      When the systems are at different levels of complexity/maturity. When a system is at a high level of complexity or maturity, and is being considered for integration into another, less evolved system, the organization may choose to keep them separate.

When have you seen examples of systems that are better off separate than integrated?  Let us know!

Several industries have developed industry-specific standards, which address their unique requirements while using ISO 9001 as a baseline for additions.

These industry-specific standards typically require more prescribed methods, forms, or processes than ISO 9001; in return for loss of flexibility, organizations will be more standardized, meet stricter or additional requirements, but also qualify for orders from industry-specific OEMs and higher level suppliers.

AS 91X0 – Aerospace standards, for suppliers, and stockists (distributors)

ISO/TS 16949 – Automotive requirements for quality

TL 9000 – Telecom requirements for quality

ISO 13485 – for medical devices

How do these standards integrate?

For ISO 9001 – ISO 9001 is used, in its entirety, as a basis for the standards.  When implementing any of these standards, ISO 9001 requirements will be met as part of the implementation, so no additional effort is required to conform with ISO 9001.

ISO 14001 – ISO 14001 is no more difficult to integrate with these standards than integrating with ISO 9001; however, there is no/limited additional benefit to integrating ISO 14001 with an industry standard vs. ISO 9001.

OHSAS 18001 – Since these industry-specific standards may also consider risk as part of their assessment, it may be easier to implement OHSAS with these standards; the concept of risk assessment and risk management are resident in the organization and can easily be extended to the risk elements of OHSAS 18001.

What are your thoughts on integration with these industry-specific standards?  Do you agree that these standards are better aligned with OHSAS?  Have you integrated ISO 14001 or OHSAS 18001 with an industry-specific standard?

Organizations that are implementing 3 management systems – Quality (Q), Environmental (E), and Occupational Health and Safety (OHS) – are doing it for a variety of reasons:

• they want to manage all of their requirements under one system;
• they are incorporating, combining, or reducing headcount;
• they are looking for additional savings and efficiencies;
• they are interested in providing information to their employees that are incorporated into one document

What does that one employee document look like?  It may look something like this:

Employees are to manufacture the widget to meet quality and customer specifications (see attached); using safe practice for handling chemicals including applicable PPE (personal protective equipment) – chemical resistant gloves and safety glasses; and if there is any chemical spill, appropriate steps shall be taken including containment and clean-up.

So, we’ve told the employee to make a high quality part (Q), using PPE (OHS), and what to do if there is an accidental environmental impact via spill (E).  The employee shouldn’t look at this and say, “Hey – is this a Q, E, or OHS instruction?”  They should look at it and say, “Hey, this is what I have to do to meet the requirements of my job.”  It should be seamless to them which standard they are meeting; they should meet all requirements, regardless of which standard the requirement originates from.

How to do the integration?  We know from previous posts on integrating Q and E and integrating E and OHS that there are overlapping requirements among the standards.  When implementing the trilogy of standards that are the subject of this post, it is important to remember that, while there are several areas of alignment, including management reviews, internal audits, document and records control, and corrective and preventive actions, there are also several requirements that are unique to one or two of the standards (but not the other(s)).  Therefore, it is important to identify and address the unique requirements, and ensure that they don’t get overlooked in our ecstasy of implementing an integrated system.  What are some of these requirements?  We need to address customer requirements for quality; the environmental aspects/impacts for environmental and health/safety aspects/impacts for OHS; risk management and management of change for OHS; to name a few.

I’d love to hear your comments on your integration – what worked and what didn’t?  Any tips or advice for others?  Please share!

Depending on your industry, you may be asked to integrate an Environmental (E) system with an Occupational Health and Safety (OHS) system to make your system more robust; to save time and effort; or to comply with customer requirements (to name a few of the many reasons cited for integration of E and OHS).

With the latest revisions of ISO 14001 and OHSAS 18001, integration is very easy to implement.  [A joke within the consulting field is that one standard is identical to the other with the exception of the “global replace” – and it’s not too far from wrong].  Since there is virtual identical redundancy in requirements in most cases, integration is the way to get a bigger ‘bang for the buck’.  However, there are important differences between these two standards, and you want to ensure that you are not overlooking the differences between the two standards while doing the implementation.

Unique areas of the standard: for OHS, the organization must consider acceptable risk and risk management; management of change; participation of workers; and incident investigation. For EMS, the focus is on environmental impact rather than impact to workers/safety.

Areas that are similar include a Policy (4.2); hazard (OHS) or Environmental (E) identification (4.3.1); legal and other requirements, and compliance (4.3.2 / 4.5.2); objectives and programs (4.3.3); roles and responsibility (4.4.1); competence, training, and awareness (4.4.2); communication (4.4.3); documentation (4.4.4); control of documents (4.4.5); operational control (4.4.6); emergency preparedness/response (4.4.7); measurement and monitoring (4.5.1);  nonconformity, corrective and preventive actions (4.5.3); control of records(4.5.4); internal audits (4.5.5); and management review (4.6)

If you’ve been reading any of our other blogs this month, you know we’re focusing on relationships this month: relationships in business, building relationships, trust, and dysfunctional relationships with your business. All of this writing about relationships, and we’ve left out the most obvious relationship topic for our business – The relationship between different Management Systems!

How do you keep the relationship healthy?

• Communicate the importance and processes of each system throughout the company. Don’t favor one over the other. The systems work best when they work together and given equal ranking. Avoid one from overpowering the other and stressing their similarities and shared processes.

• Understand that you have to give as well as receive. As with any initiative, you shouldn’t expect a quick fix solution to all your problems. This was probably emphasized during your implementation process, but can be forgotten over time. Companies with the best intentions to keep up with their improvement efforts may get sidetracked and loose focus of process, just going through the motions but not getting the maximum return possible. Unfortunately by the time it is recognized, the company is so dis-enamored with the system they don’t make an effort to get it back on track and miss out on the progress they could be making.

• Ask how your management systems are “feeling”. Do a status check. Are you up to date on your internal audits, management reviews, and closing out your C/PAR’s? Try an informal “audit” and pop quiz a couple employees – if they look at you blankly like they don’t know what you’re talking about, that’s a good sign you need to show your systems some love.

Take the time to nurture your integrated system and you’ll be on cloud 9 – neglect it and end up in the dog house. It’s never too late to ask for help, call up the Integration Dr today and get some “relationship counseling” for your integrated management systems.

Occupational Health and Safety has long been legislated in many parts of the world.  In other areas, OHS control is virtually non-existent, and the impact in these areas (Africa, China, etc. come to mind) is significant.

Let’s talk first about what OHS is, then we can dive into why this standard varies so widely across the globe.

In developed countries, OHSMS is probably in place because it is also mandated / regulated by law.  These countries have had  laws in place much longer than the OHS standard 18001 has been in existence; so complying with OHSAS 18001 has not been difficult.  However, there is little impetus for companies to implement OHSAS 18001:2007 compared with other standards in these countries, since they are often not implementing significant new processes (and therefore reaping significant new benefits).

In developing countries, OHS systems may not be the norm; nor are these countries emphasizing OHS legislatively.  At a recent NOSHCON conference, several speakers presented data on the impact of poor nutrition, dehydration, and substandard working conditions on the accident/incident rate in South Africa.  Not surprisingly, the more compromised a worker is due to ill health (25% of the population is HIV compromised), poor nutrition (employees in the field are fed ‘pap’ – something akin to grits – with hot sauce as their meal); or dehydration (water stations are spaced too far apart to allow workers to get a drink, despite the heat and humidity, without loss of productivity; so workers who are paid by the piece do not hydrate except at lunch, which leads to chronic dehydration).

What is a OHSMS?

it has very similar elements to the QMS and EMS system we’ve discussed in previous blog posts – and this is by design.  Therefore, it has a policy, supported by planning, objectives, and targets; it asks the organization to identify health and safety significant aspects and impacts; and it monitors OHS performance, and provides for continual improvement of that performance.

What are the benefits of a OHSMS?

- it allows the organization to perform a formal assessment of their system.  This is one of the indicators that every company has mentioned in their exit survey as a key benefit.

- it provides the organization with a framework to implement OHSMS as described above.  This gap analysis road map provides a clear action item list, to provide continual improvement project sources.

An EMS is put in place to provide a system for an organization to manage and control their environmental aspects and impacts.

Environmental Management Systems are structured around the following:

- identification of an organization’s significant aspects, and their environmental impacts;

- a policy, supported by plans and objectives, and their targets;

- continual improvement of their environmental performance

- records of environmental performance and achievement of targets

What is ’significant’?  This is sometimes the $64,000 question.  There are many ways that an organization may determine significance — they can identify all aspects/impacts, and rank in order of severity, and work on the top xx%; they can set an objective limit – everything above that limit is considered significant; or any other myriad ways of determining what is significant.  A future post will talk about different tools that are available to make this task less cumbersome…

What the organization should NOT do is to ‘play the game’ with significant aspects/impacts.  One company I visited, which used some pretty nasty chemicals, and was located in an environmentally sensitive area, chose to say that only water – yes, H2O – was significant, since “We use so much more water than we do chemicals”.  OK, that was true – they use tens of thousands of gallons of water – to wash their parts from all these nasty chems, because if an employee was to touch these chems they would receive an immediate chemical burn!  Although I ‘discussed’ with them the severity of the environmental impact results of these chemicals – much more environmentally damaging if spilled than water, as an example – I could not dissuade them from listing water as their only significant environmental aspect.  Needless to say, at the end of the day we mutually agreed to part ways… because I’m not about playing the game; I’m about making a positive environmental impact.

Is an EMS implemented uniformly throughout the world?  Unfortunately, no.  There are many organizations where EMS is a way of life; and the Europeans have been ahead of much of the rest of the world in implementing environmental and sustainable systems.  [I remember traveling to Germany in 1987 and being introduced to paper recycling in the office...]  In other parts of the world, rivers are still treated as a dumping ground for sewage, chemicals, and garbage; and there are little or no environmental controls in place while performing operations including mining, logging, or fishing.

However, the future is not totally bleak – there are more countries supporting implementation of EMSs than ever, and more organizations are implementing EMS and finding the satisfaction of reaping both financial and environmental benefits from it.

A Quality Management System (QMS) is put in place by an organization to provide a framework for their quality initiatives.  A QMS typically consists of the following elements:

• Quality Policy
• Quality Objectives
• Quality Plans
• Required procedures
• Quality Records

One of the first questions I get from clients is:  “Where should I start with all this?”  My answer depends on why the organization is trying to implement a quality standard.  Is it to:

• become certified?  –> Start with the ISO 9001 standard
• understand their processes?  –> Start with process mapping and analysis
• meet a customer requirement?  –>  Understand what the client is looking for
• want improvement? –> Consider what info is currently available, and go from there.  You may have the info you need already, or that information/data may need to be generated prior to embarking on improvement efforts…

The typical elements of a QMS:

• Management commitment
• Resource allocation (human, technology, $$)
• Process/service realization and delivery
• Checking/verification (can be via data or records, inspections, audits, etc.)
• Continual Improvement (CI)

In addition, there are several support processes that make this possible:  shipping, receiving, purchasing, accounting, invoicing, finance, HR, etc.

A QMS will have some form of the elements listed here – and virtually all QMSs have these elements – whether the model used includes ISO, Performance Excellence (Baldrige), or other methodologies.

If focusing more on improvement, business process mapping and analysis (BPM/BPA), Lean and Six Sigma, and other tools may be better suited.

There is some concern that implementing a QMS is bureaucratic, time-consuming, and difficult.  I’ve seen this first-hand – when an organization doesn’t begin with the end in mind (to quote Covey), it will implement a hodge-podge of procedures, formats, records, etc. and provide little or no overall direction to its people – either implementers or the rank and file.  Where I see this the most is when top management decides that they need a QMS – then abdicates the responsibility.  Not delegates, which implies that they have assigned this to someone else, but are available to provide clarification, direction, and resources; but instead, they assign it to “Joe”, who then has to figure out what’s going on, how this is going to work, and try and use informal power (working with peers, subordinates, and superiors) to bring this program to fruition.  Poor Joe may have no management support on this – which means that the program is doomed from the start.

In contrast, when top management is engaged in the implementation of a QMS, it’s a beauty to behold.  There is clear direction on not only what the organization is doing, but why; and this makes all the difference.  Top managers are looking for status updates, providing resources as needed, and supporting Joe as he implements all the facets of a QMS in the organization.  A recent client told me that he was implementing a QMS because “it’s the right thing to do – and will also save us money!”… my kinda client!  And, we are integrating Process Improvement techniques into his QMS from the beginning – so we are streamlining as we implement!  I’ll keep you posted on our progress…