Tag Archives: integrated management system

Does Document Management Apply to Fish? The Answer is More Complicated Than You Might Think

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Document Management

In 2015, the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) ruled that a fish is not a document. While this might seem like an absurd problem for one of the most powerful legal organizations in the world to consider, the idea behind it is an important one that might have an impact on how you do your job. On August 23, 2007, John Yates, the captain of the fishing boat Miss Katie, was fishing off the coast of Florida when he was found to have caught and kept a number of red grouper fish that were under the legal minimum size limit of 20 inches. The field officer with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission instructed Yates to return to port and keep the fish for evidence. Instead, Yates threw the fish back into the sea, effectively destroying the evidence against him.

In response, the Department of Justice … Read more...

Using an Integrated Management System in Your Organization

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Many of today’s organizations use management systems to establish policies and procedures for achieving their objectives. Most frequently, organizations have management systems to support quality, health and safety, environment and sustainability, and data privacy. Management systems are not, by definition, technology solutions. Instead, they are conceptual models of the organizational processes and responsibilities that help coordinate everything in the direction of a common goal. However, while a management system can theoretically use paper-based manual processes, the increasing complexity of the global marketplace and the attendant compliance requirements mean that most organizations will need a reliable cloud-based technology solution to support their management systems. 

Management systems are often segregated from one another in the organization. For example, the quality management system might be separate from the safety management system. This creates the risk of isolated responses to incidents that impact each individual management system. It also means considerable duplication of effort, which wastes both human and financial resources. To … Read more...

6 Reasons Why Quality Professionals Support Integrated Management Systems

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On February 8, 2017, I delivered a presentation to 138 attendees on Integrated Management Systems (IMS) at the monthly ASQ Toronto section meeting. To learn more about IMS, read The Case for EHSQ Integrated Management Systems. The audience consisted of a broad range of experts including CQEs, CQAs, CQIAs, CSSGB, CSSBB, management consultants, auditors, among others.

As part of the introduction, I asked the audience how many people have either heard about or were already familiar with Integrated Management Systems and I’d say about 40% of the audience raised their hands – which is a good sign! I was actually only expecting about 10 to 20 people to raise their hands. This definitely demonstrates that Integrated Management Systems is of interest to quality management professionals.  The concept of an IMS becomes even more important because of the harmonization of standards due to the recent changes in ISO 9001:2015, ISO … Read more...

The Case for EHSQ Integrated Management Systems

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Have you ever wondered if there is a better way to manage your organization’s management systems using an Integrated Management System?  Silos and disparate systems should be a thing of the past.  Between the Quality Management System (QMS), Safety Management System (SMS), and Environmental Management System (EMS), there is abundant opportunity to eliminate inefficiency and duplication of activities especially in more complex organizations with multiple business units.

To learn more, watch this webinar hosted by ASQ (American Society for Quality) where Peter-Elias Alouche discusses:

  • The importance of the customer’s perspective
  • Why businesses should integrate their management systems
  • What is an EHSQ Integrated Management System anyways?
  • What are some of the opportunities to start integrating management systems today
  • The importance of culture

Whenever you assess or improve the effectiveness of your organization’s management system(s), you need to think about your customers and what they want. It’s easy to get caught up … Read more...

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 … Read more...