Tag Archives: system

To integrate, or not to integrate… Part 4

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We’ll conclude our discussion on Integrated Management Systems by looking at the supposed ‘Holy Grail’ of business management: a management system that goes many steps further than simply EHS and quality concerns, and is applied across all business lines, even those outside EHS and Quality realms. This would be a truly integrated management system that could cover areas such as corporate governance, sustainability…basically any business processes and activities.

For example, document control, Corporate Social Responsibility, auditing, and training could be governed along the same integrated management standards. According to Robert Pojasek’s 2006 article in Environment Quality Management, one synergistic or ‘umbrella’ system could enable an organization to ensure the quality of its products…and demonstrate that those products are consistent with the organization’s vision, mission, core values and objectives.”

This idea is based on the premise that, by some means or other, all business activities overlap with some other (if not all other) business activities, so rather than treating each consideration as a watertight compartment, apply the same form of a management system across all

The basic integration of ISHQ considerations could open the gateway to a holistic and synergistic approach to all business concerns, but this can be an ambitious and sometimes fruitless endeavour if the business in question is not of a size and scope necessary to warrant facing the logistical challenges demanded by such an organizational shift.

As mentioned, the essential message is that businesses shouldn’t integrate systems for the sake of integration, but rather when a clear business benefit of integration is identified. That said, if the end goal is a seamless, organization-wide management system, keep scalability at the top of your mind as you evaluate management system options, including software solutions.

To integrate, or not to integrate… Part 2

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A consideration of the relative advantages and disadvantages of an IMS is a sound starting point to evaluate whether the time has come to integrate management platforms, or whether integration would generate no immediate or long-term payoff.

  • Cost efficiency: The aforementioned standards share several common requirements, including document control, auditing and training. An obvious cost-reduction arises when a business addresses each of these areas with shared software and processes. Also, registrars tend to provide discounts when they are able to audit two or more management systems together, as opposed to one at a time.
  • Time efficiency: While the logistics of implementing an IMS may be complicated at the onset, the relative simplicity of managing EHSQ systems together on an ongoing basis will ultimately save time and frustration.
  • Corporate Brand: Most Businesses understand that a negative EHSQ ‘event’ (for example, a spill, a product recall or an employee injury) can have a significant impact on corporate brand—and share price. Applying the same standards to each area by way of an IMS significantly curbs the risk of any such event.
  • Collaboration: An IMS reduces the silos of information that typically haunt most organizations. Key data can be selectively shared across an organization thereby reducing risk (e.g., associated with the use of hazardous materials), while better capitalizing on opportunities.

While the likely benefits of EHS and quality management integration are substantial, an IMS is not for every business. In Monday’s post, we’ll look at some of the complications that can arise from IMS implementation, as well as the business benefits that arise from implementing the right IMS.

 

To integrate, or not to integrate…

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Though environment, health, safety (EHS) and quality management issues are often handled by individual management systems, the guiding principles behind each of these areas share a common link — W. Edwards Deming. The American quality guru is most commonly associated with the Plan-Do-Check-Act (PDCA) cycle, an iterative problem-solving process used to resolve quality issues and improve business performance. But it is important to remember the foremost EHS and quality management standards — including ISO14001 (environment), OSHAS 18000 (health and safety) and ISO 9001 (quality) — are all rooted in the PDCA or Deming Cycle.

Businesses that encounter regular overlap between these areas ought to consider the potential benefits of an Integrated Management System (IMS). An IMS coordinates all of an organization’s procedures, systems and processes within one complete framework and, in an ideal scenario, allows the organization to operate as a seamless whole, with unified objectives across all departments.

But a fulsome IMS is not for every company. Any business of any size does not necessarily stand to benefit from adopting an integrated management system. Instead, businesses should integrate management systems not just for the sake of integration, but where there is a clear business benefit that can be tied to integration. The principle benefits of integrated EHS and quality management include both cost-effectiveness and collaboration between intrinsically related EHSQ concerns.

Imagine a business that uses a hypothetical hazardous material in the manufacture of a product at one of its plants and consider how this hazardous material can create near equally significant issues within each EHS and quality realm:

  • Environment: The hazardous material may be toxic to the environment at large and necessitate consideration within the organization’s air emissions monitoring.
  • Health and Safety: The same hazardous material may compromise the health or directly endanger the lives of employees in the plant.
  • Quality: The handling and use of the hazardous material may be governed explicitly by existing quality standards.

As an example, consider last year’s string of recalls associated with the cadmium content in children’s toys manufactured in China. The extended direct exposure of factory workers to the highly toxic heavy metal would necessitate an internal health and safety policy governing safe exposure and use. Also, given the targeted end user of the toys are children, quality management mechanisms would have to ensure the cadmium content of the toys did not exceed federally regulated maximums affecting the markets in which the product would be sold. But further, since improperly disposed cadmium is known to leech into and contaminate groundwater, provisions would have to be put into place to ensure proper disposal of the material at the plant level.

Tomorrow we’ll discuss the pros and cons of implementing an IMS.

Understanding the business benefits of consensus-based standards

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Businesses seek ISO certification for a variety of reasons: attracting and retaining customers and clients, boosting brand image, and more.

Getting executive buy-in for ISO certification can sometimes be a challenge, and even leaders who have made the decision to seek standards certification – be it ISO 9001, ISO 14001, or any other widely used standards – often fail to consider the unsung rewards of certification.

Businesses that implement ISO standards often focus on the perceived burdens of adoption, such as expansive paper trails, demanding document management, and seemingly interminable audits. They forget that, when executed and implemented properly, certification can spell rich financial rewards.

Well, thanks to the folks at the World Standards Cooperative (WSC), an organization that promotes voluntary, consensus-based standards, business leaders have access to a variety of tools that illustrate the business benefits of adopting ISO standards. The WSC website contains links to dozens of such resources, including:

So take a look at this valuable resource, and if you are in the market for stress-free certification, don’t forget to review Intelex’s array of streamlined ISO-related products.

‘If we don’t pass the audit, you can fire me’: Achieving the flawless EMS audit

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Joey Ebanks, EHS and Training Manager for Caribbean Utilities Company (CUC) and Intelex client, dropped by the Intelex offices in Toronto, Canada this week to make a presentation to Intelexians on how CUC is using Intelex software, and how it has boosted the performance of its EHS programs.

Below is an excerpt from his presentation, an excellent anecdote that reflects Joey’s confidence as he entered an audit of his environmental management system (EMS) last month:

“In April we had a surveillance audit. The auditor came back in to look at 50 per cent of our EMS system. And I actually took the weekend off and went to Fort Lauderdale, had some fun. My boss, our VP, was very upset that I was not there, making sure everyone was ready for the audit. But I was absolutely sure we were ready. In fact I said to him, ‘I’m 99 per cent sure we are going to pass. If we don’t, you can fire me.’

“So we created within Intelex a little audit report based on what the auditor was looking for. And on April 18, the auditor came in. Traditionally the audit wrap-up session takes two hours, because there are so many things to discuss. This audit wrap-up session took four minutes. Four minutes. The CEO and all the executives came in the room and sat down, prepared for a fight. Then auditor went through the report, and she just simply said, ‘Look: these are the recommendations. Take them or leave them. This is as close to as flawless an audit as I’ve ever seen.’

“So it took us four minutes, and that’s how we knew were making huge progress with Intelex.”

Training and quality: peas in a pod

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According to experts, though the connection can seem distant or indirect, proper training has a clear impact on quality, just as it has a clear impact on every aspect of business.

As business process design and ISO 9001 expert Chris Anderson noted in a blog post on the top ten root causes of business problems, poor training is the number one source of business issues. Two decades of business management led Anderson to place poor training ahead of poor methods, poor employee placement and poor engineering and design on the list.

“People don’t make mistakes,” Anderson insists in the post. “Systems make mistakes.”

And just as product and service quality issues arise from systemic deficiencies, employee performance — and its impact on quality — is correlative to the integrity of training management systems.

Training and quality are best thought of as peas in a pod — inseparable elements that should always be mentioned in the same sentence. Even if an organization feels it is 100 per cent where it needs to be from a quality perspective, training is essentially what got it there.

Best-in-class companies have thorough, streamlined training management programs (most often leveraged by software) that deliver measurable results. For those that overlook thorough training, it might be due to lack of time and other resources. However, such an oversight often leads to harsh ramifications: product recalls, brand damage, injuries, fatalities and bankruptcy.

Milk ain’t oil: EPA sides with common sense

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Yes, the line’s been used a hundred times in the past few days, but warrants repeating: U.S. dairy farmers needn’t cry over spilled milk any longer.

Beneath the sound and fury of political arguments over the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) right (nay, duty) to regulate greenhouse gases, the agency quietly sided last week with milk producers and finally exempted milk from oil spill control regulations.

The EPA has long required shippers of oil tanks and containers to develop spill control and prevention plans. Problem was, this included dairy farmers, since milk is defined as oil under the Clean Water Act because it contains animal fat (an oil). The regulations were originally designed for Big Oil, not farmers, but it has taken a few years for the agency to exempt dairy from the Act’s requirements. With the final ruling, milk, milk product containers, and milk production equipment are exempt from Clean Water Act shipping and container requirements, effective immediately.

Some estimates peg the savings from the move at nearly $150 million for U.S. milk and dairy farmers.

Unfortunately, critics of the EPA have used the episode to underscore the perceived futility of the organization, apparently forgetting that it is keeping them safe from irradiated food products, among other things.

 

Planning for the unforeseeable through supplier evaluation

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Having the flexibility to identify, contain, and adapt to foreseeable and unforeseeable issues is critical to a comprehensive response plan for quality nonconformances and product recalls. Proactive, responsible companies that implement comprehensive vendor/supplier/contract manufacturer evaluation programs and performance tracking systems as components of an overall quality management system (QMS) will boost preparedness and ensure smooth responses to otherwise devastating product recall scenarios.

Any business — large companies especially — should select contract manufacturers in the same way they select suppliers and other vendors: with thorough research, hand-on inspection and rigorous screening.

A good way to think of it is this: Treat suppliers, vendors and contract manufacturers as if they are your own facilities. Even if they are not providing you with an end-user product, if your company name is going to be on the final product, your customers will view you as responsible and you will be ultimately accountable for the defect.

The alternative – basic adherence to minimal regulatory requirements – does not constitute the wisest PR and quality assurance philosophy. Recall that five years ago, a nationwide recall on children’s toys containing lead paint—and manufactured in China—cast a pall on the integrity of the country’s quality standards. It also forced American toy giant Mattel to recall more than 18 million products and face significant brand damage.

Even entrenched brand images can be dealt significant blows by product recalls, especially when those recalls affect the lives and health of children. For quality managers at companies that rely on contract manufacturers and suppliers overseas, such situations are a call to action: a proactive corporate ethos on quality management — and supply chain traceability in particular — will not only save time and costs long term, it will ensure products exceed minimal regulatory requirements and avert potential public relations and brand image crises. A comprehensive QMS that enables enhanced supply chain traceability and supplier relationship management is the hallmark of such an approach and will inevitably save costs in the long run.

Sustainability as a business opportunity

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Thinking of bringing your business to a more sustainable place?

The best starting place for any business leader to embrace sustainability is to shift away from looking at sustainability in terms of how much it will cost, and towards assessing the returns it will generate.

Consider the phenomenon known as the Cost of Poor Quality (COPQ) which emerged in the field of quality management in the late 1980s. COPQ can be thought of as follows: by neglecting the importance of quality, an organization literally pays to generate waste and other problems, often in the form of scraps, reworks, recalls, rejects, reworks, service calls, warranty claims and more. Similarly, in the realm of corporate social responsibility (CSR) and sustainability of environmental, social and economic responsibility, organizations essentially commit capital to generate waste. Not a great investment, especially when sustainability actually presents a ton of revenue-generating opportunities.

Since the purview of sustainable development is so vast and comprehensive, the ROI of sustainability initiatives manifests in myriad ways, some direct (basic cost savings through curbing resource consumption and waste) and some indirect (risk mitigation and avoidance).

Some examples of direct and indirect impacts of sustainability on financial performance include:

  • Resource Conservation and Waste Reduction: Minimizing your consumption of water, energy and resources (anything from essential office supplies like paper to raw materials for manufacturing) by implementing conservation policies and tracking sustainability key performance indicators generates the obvious, direct effect of cost savings: by consuming fewer materials either in operations or production, you’ll save money associated with the acquisition of materials. However, you must remember the old management adage about measuring what you want to manage.
  • Penalty Aversion and Regulatory Compliance: Any organization committed to sustainable development and reporting on its progress in achieving its sustainability goals will be required to track essential environmental, social and economic metrics including, for example, air emissions and wastewater discharge. If you’re committed to tracking, analyzing and reporting on air emissions data, you’ll be better prepared to avoid the costly fines of notices of violations associated with exceeding permitted air emissions and wastewater tolerances.
  • Brand Image: Though boosting environmental, social and economic performance should be the crux of any sustainability strategy, the marketing and publicity aspects and opportunities are not to be diminished as ROI-generating facets of sustainable development. By leveraging a proven commitment to social responsibility and environmental responsibility, an organization stands to place in high-profile rankings on CSR performance, attract and retain top-tier talent, gain media attention and public respect, and improve sales by enticing more high-level, global clients.
  • Customer and Consumer Relations: Wal-Mart’s recent initiative to green its supply chain represents a great example of how one company’s sustainability initiatives can affect thousands of other businesses. America’s largest retailer has been on a mission to green it massive supply chain, recently announcing it plans to cut 20 million metric tons of greenhouse gas from its supply chain by 2015. Wal-Mart’s initiatives affect thousands of other companies around the globe and represent an emerging cause-effect relationship between suppliers and big corporations. As one organization seeks to achieve and report on a certain level of social and environmental performance, it demands the same standard of performance and transparency across its vendor base and supply chain. Also, from a consumer standpoint, end users will increasingly demand sustainable products. Businesses will simply have to meet certain standards of sustainable development in order to retain clients and grow their business.

Though the essential financial benefits of conserving resources, for example, can be easily quantified and tracked, it is more difficult to pull tangible ROI statistics from the cost- and risk-aversion factors, as well as customer retention factors, associated with some of the above points, except on a case-by-case basis. However, proactive corporate strategies beat trial-and-error approaches as the best recipe for optimizing returns on sustainability investments.

 

Five Ws: Avoiding the nightmare of a product recall

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Eggs. Toy trucks. Spinach. Meds. And now walnuts.

Recalls — and not the good kind — are a daily reality within an interconnected, modern global economy. But for the unprepared business, a product recall can be a logistical and PR nightmare, costing significant capital, and precious hours of downtime as well as — perhaps most significantly — irreparable damage to delicately nurtured brand image.

Since consumer activist agencies and public awareness at large tend to be a few steps ahead of legislators and regulatory bodies on public safety concerns, it is imperative businesses stay a few steps ahead of the game. For companies that rely on contract manufacturers, this can be easily achieved with a comprehensive quality management system (QMS).

Some essential questions — often rendered complex by the size and scope of large corporations — can be resolved with straightforward answers if an electronic QMS has been put into place.

For example, an electronic QMS is capable of providing quality managers the answers to what are known as the ‘five Ws’ of product recalls:

  • What: In the event of a product recall, the fundamental reason for the recall will narrow-down investigative work and help quality managers build a list of questions and criteria to determine who in the supply chain is responsible for the defect or issue in question.
  • Who: A company that relies on contract manufacturers around the world must determine which supplier within its supply chain is associated with the defective or unsafe part or product.
  • Where: The “who” and “where” questions are intrinsically related, for once it is established who is responsible for the issue, it can be broadly determined where the issue arose. But it is also essential to isolate where exactly — specifically within the manufacturing line of the contract supplier, for example — the defect was caused.
  • When: Supply chains can be complex systems, but it is important to have the capacity to determine when a defect or issue arose within the system.
  • Why: The other ‘Ws’ of product recalls will help a quality manager determine why a defect or issue arose. Answering this question quickly and effectively will help a business develop an action plan to respond to the product recall.

Quality managers strive for the often elusive goal of perfection but must come to grips that even in the most highly monitored systems and well-oiled machines, somewhere, somehow — by the laws of probability and human fallibility — an issue will likely arise. This probability is mitigated, however, if an electronic QMS has been implemented in the place of archaic spreadsheet- or paper-based tracking and supply chain traceability systems.