Certification to approved
standards in the areas of health, safety, environment and quality
has become big business. Typical standards include ISO, EFQM,
VCA, TQM, and ARBO. Certification is often required by suppliers,
customers or government organisations. It can also serve as
a stamp of approbation for a company in its market. The certification
process requires a documented management system and procedures.
It is this requirement which often proves to be the Achilles
heel of the certification process. So what are the challenges?
Creating procedures
Procedures are needed to document the way your company works
in any given area. The first challenge is to formulate each
procedure in writing. This means appointing and managing an
editor or team of editors to write these. You also need to decide
who will approve the procedures, once they are written. Corrections
and remarks have to be incorporated into the original document
within a given time frame. Finally there is the process of final
approval and distribution.
Distributing
procedure manuals
Once the procedures have been finalised, they have to be made
available to everyone concerned. In the case of ISO manuals,
this means everyone in the organisation. The challenge here
is that only the most recently approved version can be used.
Older versions need to be disposed of. Updates have to be
distributed in a timely fashion and at reasonable cost. Subsets
of the complete manual may have to be distributed to people
with specific functions. In short, procedure manuals need
to be distributed electronically. Paper won’t cut it.
Maintaining manuals
The next challenge is to keep the procedure manual up to date.
Your organisation’s activities are constantly changing
and your procedures manual needs to reflect this. Certain
procedures may need to be changed at different times. These
will need to be approved and corrected all over again. This
means that you will come across the need for version management,
both for individual procedures and for the manual as a whole.
Finally you will have to create new procedure subsets for
re-distribution to different people and departments.
Controlling the
process
Once your procedure manuals have been produced and distributed,
it is critical to maintain strict control over their use and
application. Having been distributed, manuals can start living
a life of their own. It is of utmost importance to ensure
watertight version control to ensure that the entire organisation
remains up to date. Use of outdated manuals and procedures
can undermine the entire certification process.
Overcoming
the challenges
HSE and Quality Managers are more occupied with the administration
of procedures than with focussing on the business of applying
the standard itself. This means they may not be maximising
their added value to the organisation. Using a paper-based
system or a document management system designed for something
else will just exacerbate the problem. Using a purpose-built
application like WEBISO will change
your Achilles heel into a winning streak. It provides a simple,
intuitive solution which will turn your administrative challenges
into a streamlined support system.
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HSE & Quality Management 
