How to integrate the three major systems of quality, environment, and occupational health and safety? What you care about is here!

Many friends in quality management probably want to understand how the quality, environment, and occupational health and safety systems can be integrated and implemented, what conditions need to be met, and which principles must be followed. Let's take a look today!

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01 .
Why integrate?

Based on the desire for self-improvement, market conditions, and customer requirements, over the past decade, various enterprises in China have been implementing multiple management systems such as ISO9001 Quality, ISO14001 Environment, ISO 45001 Occupational Health and Safety, Lean Production, and 6SIGMA, with as few as two or three systems and as many as eight or nine.

With the needs of domestic and international situations, more and more enterprises that have established and implemented quality management systems are beginning to introduce other management systems, such as environmental management systems and occupational health and safety management systems, and applying for third-party certification.

Enterprises must establish and maintain the operation and certification qualifications of two, three, or multiple management systems, which requires considerable human, financial, and time resources each year.

Because operating three independent management systems is not conducive to business development, integrated management and certification have become inevitable. Moreover, other management systems have strong correlations in terms of standard concepts and elements, all built on the framework of the quality management system, all embodying the seven basic management principles, with similar operation modes and document structures, thus providing technical feasibility for integrated management systems.

The practical significance of integrated management systems lies in the following aspects:

1. Using a single set of system documents for unified control helps simplify internal management, reduce management costs, and achieve performance enhancement.

2. The effectiveness of an enterprise's management functions and efficiency depends on the overall effectiveness of the management system. An integrated management system helps improve management level, efficiency, and execution.

3. An integrated management system covering multiple certifications helps enhance the enterprise's self-development and self-improvement, boosting market competitiveness.

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02 .
Problems with independent operation

The establishment of the three systems has effectively promoted quality, environment, and occupational health and safety work. In operational management, we follow system standards, elements, and legal requirements to implement comprehensive, all-round, and full-process control over potential quality, environmental, and safety issues in production processes, using the PDCA operation model to strengthen management and continuous improvement, raising enterprise management levels. However, we have also identified the following issues during operation:

1. The same department executes three sets of systems in their work, causing inconsistent responsibilities and uncoordinated actions.

2. When the same production process and unified work procedures are required by all three system documents, repetitive work and duplicate records occur.

3. Internal audits are conducted separately for the three systems, resulting in repeated audits of the same records and work.

4. Management reviews are conducted separately for the three systems, increasing the number of reviews and meetings, with less than ideal quality and effectiveness.

5. The system documents initially prepared for certification of the three systems sometimes do not align with actual production and operations, causing a "two skins" phenomenon.

6. Training on the three systems is insufficient, and there is still a gap in the emphasis on leadership roles and full participation.

7. Traditional management decision-making and habitual methods sometimes conflict with the requirements of the three systems. Some managers and employees cannot correctly understand and use the three systems as tools applied throughout production and operations, including quality, environment, and occupational health and safety.

In summary, the issues fall into the following three aspects:

1) Some organizations must perform repetitive work to meet different standard certifications, resulting in three manuals, three sets of procedure documents, repeated internal audits, and repeated management reviews, leading to low efficiency in management system operation.

2) Due to non-unified certification audits, enterprises must undergo three audits to obtain three certificates, sometimes conducted by 2-3 certification bodies. This not only increases audit fees, travel expenses, and reception costs but also consumes the time and energy of management and staff, wasting resources. The repeated investment of human, material, and financial resources greatly increases certification costs, discouraging enterprises from pursuing management system certification and hindering certification progress.

3) Establishing three different management systems based on different management frameworks creates a large workload for internal coordination. It may also cause quality, environment, and safety management departments to compete for resources, issue conflicting directives, fail to share information, or even exclude each other, based on their respective professional scopes and responsibilities.

How can an enterprise establish a management system that effectively meets the requirements of all three standards while reducing workload and operational layers, integrating the quality management system, environmental management system, and occupational health and safety management system into a comprehensive management system?

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03 .
Conditions required for integration

To integrate the three systems, an enterprise must have the following basic conditions:

1. The enterprise's products involve requirements for quality, environment, and occupational health and safety, and the enterprise is willing to implement comprehensive control.

2. There are sufficient human and other resources needed for system integration.

3. The organization's resources can be fully shared.

4. The organization needs to conduct training and promotion of relevant standards.

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04 .
Basic principles of integration

1. Content with the same management objects and basically consistent management requirements should be integrated. For content where the management objects and requirements are the same across the three standards, the enterprise should integrate system documents, resource allocation, and operational control.

2. The integrated management requirements should cover the content of all three standards, taking the highest requirements rather than the lowest. The integrated management system must meet all requirements of the three standards to ensure that the organization's integrated management system complies with quality, environmental, and occupational health and safety requirements and achieves the organization's quality, environmental, and occupational health and safety objectives.

3. The integrated management system documents should be operable, maintaining coordination and relevance among documents. The integrated management system procedures should not be excessive; they must be operable and convenient to use.

4. Integration should help reduce the number of documents, facilitate document use; unify and coordinate system planning, operation, and monitoring to achieve resource sharing; improve management efficiency and reduce management costs.

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05 .
Steps of integration

General steps for enterprise system integration:

1. The organization's leadership unifies thinking and makes decisions;
2. Establish a leadership team and working team for the integration of the management system;
3. Conduct training at different levels, focusing on training related to standards and document writing;
4. Develop an integrated management policy based on laws, regulations, customer, relevant parties, society, employee requirements, organizational purpose, and current management status;
5. Identify the processes required by the quality management system, and identify and evaluate environmental factors and safety risk factors;
6. Develop management objectives and indicators based on the management policy;
7. Allocate functions for the integrated management system, clarifying corresponding responsibilities and authorities;
8. Develop quality plans or management programs for product realization, environment, and occupational health and safety based on objectives;
9. Prepare integrated management system documents;
10. Release and promote the integrated management system documents;
11. Equip and implement the human resources, infrastructure, and other resources required by the integrated management system;
12. Conduct a trial operation for 3-6 months;
13. Train and appoint internal auditors who meet the requirements of the integrated management system;
14. Conduct at least one internal audit based on the three standards, covering all management departments and requirements;
15. Track and review corrective actions for nonconformities;
16. Hold management review meetings to evaluate the suitability, adequacy, and effectiveness of the integrated management system, and propose directions for continuous improvement.
17. Implement improvements to maintain the effective operation of the management system.

The integration of the three systems facilitates our understanding and mastery of management regularities. Under the consistent management foundation established by the organization, human resources can be scientifically allocated, the organizational management structure optimized, and management activities with consistent requirements coordinated, improving work efficiency, fostering versatile talents, reducing management costs, and enhancing the efficiency of the management system operation.

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06 .
Advantages of Integrated Management System Audits

1. Significance of establishing the system

1) Reduce management and certification costs, and promote the implementation of system certification work
2) Reduce management inconsistencies and improve management efficiency
3) Complementary advantages across management fields
4) Provide holistic problem-solving methods
5) Facilitate the establishment of a management concept integrating quality, environment, and occupational health and safety within the organization

2. Significance of integrated audits

— Integrated audits can reduce certification costs related to the organization and lessen the burden on the auditee;
— Implementing integrated audits reduces interruptions to the organization's product realization processes and continuous management time;
— Integrated audits coordinate similar or related requirements involved in the organization's daily management work and address differences caused by separate audits of different systems;

In summary, integrated audits help promote the formation of an organizational system management framework and, through auditing different systems, can more comprehensively, accurately, and objectively evaluate the organization's overall management level, facilitating more reasonable measures to improve overall performance and achieve continuous improvement.

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07 .
Development Trends of Integrated Audits

1) The integrated management system should be an organic integration of the three standards, not a simple addition of three systems. Before establishing the integrated management system, an IMS standard should be formed as the basis for its establishment. This standard may still use PDCA as the basic framework.

2) One of the purposes of establishing the integrated management system is to reduce workload by creating one system and implementing unified internal audits and management reviews.

3) Integrated audits should transition from one audit with three certificates to one audit with one certificate.

4) Training "all-round" integrated auditors will become a focus for certification and training institutions. Single audits/certifications for quality, environment, and occupational health and safety will coexist with integrated audits/certifications for a long time; in most industries, especially high-risk ones, single audits/certifications will gradually be replaced by integrated audits/certifications.

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08 .
Optimization and Maintenance of the Integrated Management System

Establish a dedicated system management department or position with full authorization to coordinate and communicate internally on system implementation, improve and optimize the system based on common and typical issues. Continuously improve according to the PDCA cycle, promoting the enterprise's quality management, environmental management, and occupational health and safety management performance to higher levels.

(1) Conduct internal training for the integrated management system

Conduct comprehensive training for all employees in stages and levels according to system requirements and procedures. The depth of training depends on employee quality and the complexity of the enterprise's product activities. The deeper the training, the smoother the system implementation and operation. The success of training directly affects whether the system operates normally. Training should combine system documents with actual operations, especially adding content related to environment and occupational health and safety. Besides operational skills training, enhancing employees' awareness of quality, environment, and occupational health and safety plays a decisive role in the effective implementation and operation of the entire system.

(2) Ensure resource allocation and investment

Although the environmental management system does not mandate a specific level of environmental performance, it requires continuous improvement of environmental performance through system operation to meet the requirements of relevant parties and society; the occupational health and safety system emphasizes risk prevention and must comply with legal and regulatory requirements. The integrated management system needs to allocate at least 2-3 full-time personnel with rich experience in enterprise management, quality management, environmental management, safety management, health management, system and certification management. All of the above require certain funds and resources and the establishment of a mechanism for annual improvement.

(3) Implement effective internal audits

The attention and commitment of top management, improving internal auditors' job benefits, and creating an atmosphere within the enterprise of managing according to the management system are essential for the effective operation of the management system. This enables self-improvement through internal audits and management reviews, maintaining and optimizing the integrated management system.

The integration of management systems is an inevitable trend and requires further research and exploration.

1. Starting from achieving the overall goals of the enterprise, form a system management team personally led by top management, begin with top-level design to decompose responsibilities, allocate resources, and coordinate document preparation.

2. Learn from the experience of establishing and operating various management systems, and use the PDCA cycle to build and optimize an integrated management system that meets applicable laws, regulations, and professional standards for the enterprise, covering all activities without overlap.

3. Clarify the applicable scope of each specialized management through the backbone of the integrated management system, define the interfaces of each system, and avoid duplicate management and management gaps.