Integrating Management System Standards for Effectiveness

Tips and tricks to creating a more effective ISO Integrated Management System (IMS) for the management system standards (MSS) . Since the release of the ISO Annex SL (ISO/TBM), companies have had the opportunity to integrate their management systems to lean their processes. In the past five or so years, going from over 600 documented procedures and work instructions to around 100 is common among many of the clients that I have observed.

We can now combine similar processes to ensure both standard conformance and regulatory compliance. This commonization has also allowed for processes to be standardized across organizations thereby reducing the duplications that were common in years past. One example that was observed at one large plant was that they had four part time document coordinators for four departments: Quality, IT, Safety and Environmental. However, the Document Control procedure for all four groups was almost verbatim. Once this was pointed out to the President and two VP’s, they were able to combine the four into one procedure and change one of the administrators to full time document coordination releasing the other three to perform more value-added work. Integrating your business into one operating system should be common sense; however, the way many organizations have developed over years of operations and the old silo mentality taught in our business schools, things are usually not as simple as they could be. Look at the typical success planning for the management team. Instead of the old traditional Management Representative position always falling to the quality manager, maybe rotate that responsibility to all of the top manager’s direct reports to ensure that all mangers more fully understand the business.

Or how about how we train high potential personnel by having them work in various departments over 20 years to learn the organization system. How about making them, and even middle managers, internal auditors of the Management System and exposing them in a relatively short time to the entire company! While conducting over 700 management system audits in the past nine years, it has been noted repeatedly that many top managers lack a good feel of where their management team really is in their understanding of the company’s processes. Yes, they know basically how things work, but would not be able to step into the role of plant manager slot on short notice if needed. Thus, integrating the MSS’s in your organization also includes integrating the business operations to continually look for improvement opportunities to improve the bottom line of the business. This presentation will look at some advanced techniques for taking your integration to more effective levels.