How to integrate the three major systems of quality, environment, and occupational health and safety?

Many quality professionals probably want to understand how to integrate and implement the three systems of quality, environment, and occupational health and safety. However, how to integrate the three systems is a relatively systematic and complex issue. Moreover, in recent years, from ISO 9001 to ISO 14001, and then to ISO 45001, the standards have been revised continuously. The new standards bring new changes and requirements. This article will reflect on the ideas and steps of integration for reference only.

01. Why integrate?

Driven by 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 ISO 9001 Quality, ISO 14001 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 apply 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 annually.

Because operating three independent management systems is not conducive to business development, integrated management and certification have become inevitable. Additionally, other management systems have strong correlations in terms of standard concepts and elements, all built on the framework of the quality management system, incorporating 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.

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 operational control for potential quality, environmental, and safety issues in production processes, using the PDCA cycle to strengthen management and continuous improvement, raising enterprise management levels. However, the following problems have also been identified during operation:

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

2. When the three system documents require the same production process and unified work procedures, 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 the three systems during certification sometimes do not align with actual production and operation, causing a "two skins" phenomenon.

6. Training on the three systems is insufficient, and there are gaps in leadership roles and full staff 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 operation, 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 heavy workload for internal coordination. It may also cause quality, environment, and safety departments to compete for resources, issue conflicting directives, fail to share information, or even exclude each other, based on their respective professional scopes and management responsibilities.

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

03. Conditions required for integration

An enterprise must have the following basic conditions to integrate the three systems:
1. The enterprise's products involve requirements for quality, environment, and occupational health and safety, and the enterprise desires 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.

04. Basic principles of integration

1. Contents with the same management objects and basically consistent management requirements should be integrated. For contents where the three standards manage the same objects and have basically consistent management requirements, the enterprise should integrate system documents, resource allocation, and operational control.

2. The integrated management requirements should cover the contents of all three standards, taking the highest requirements rather than the lowest. An integrated management system adapts to the requirements of the three standards. Only when all requirements of the three standards are met can it be said that the integrated management system established by the organization ensures compliance with quality, environmental, and occupational health and safety management 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; help unify and coordinate system planning, operation, and monitoring to achieve resource sharing; and help improve management efficiency and reduce management costs.

05. Steps of integration

General steps for enterprises to integrate systems:
1. The organizational leadership unifies thinking and makes decisions;
2. Establish a leadership team and working team for management system integration;
3. Conduct training at different levels, focusing on training related standards and document preparation;
4. Develop organizational integrated management policies based on laws, regulations, customer, stakeholder, 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. Based on management policies, set management objectives and indicators;
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 integrated management system documents;
11. Equip and implement the human resources, infrastructure, and other resources required by the integrated management system;
12. Conduct 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.

06. Advantages of Integrated Management System Audits

1. Significance of establishing the system

1) Reduce management and certification costs, and promote the development of system certification work
2) Reduce management inconsistencies and improve management efficiency
3) Complementary advantages across management fields
4) Provide means for overall problem-solving
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.

07. Development trends of integrated audits

1) The integrated management system should be an organic fusion 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 organizations. 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.

08. Optimization and maintenance of the integrated management system

Establish a dedicated system management department or position, grant full authority, conduct internal liaison and communication on system implementation, and 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' quality awareness, environmental awareness, and occupational health and safety awareness 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 stakeholder and societal requirements; the occupational health and safety system emphasizes risk prevention and must meet legal and regulatory requirements. The integrated management system needs to allocate at least 2-3 full-time personnel with rich experience in system management who understand enterprise management, quality management, environmental management, safety management, health management, system and certification management. All of the above require investment of 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 working 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 that 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 professional management through the backbone of the integrated management system, define the interfaces of each system, and avoid duplicate management and management gaps.