Integration of QMS and strategy
Prohoc has been an ISO9001 certified company since 2003. ISO 14001 and OHSAS 18001 have also been in place for years. When renewing our strategy last year, we realized that we had a lot of elements of our new strategy in the standards. Deploying the new version of standards would be fully inline with out strategy deployment.
It was easy and obvious decision to integrate strategy and three management systems (ISO 9001, ISO 14001 and OHSAS 18001) into one management system. That would serve our strategy and the needs of our employees. Integration is also a matter of efficiency. All management systems have common elements like recognizing customer, employee and other stakeholder needs and requirements and managing risks and opportunities. Prohoc got the best results by combining these.
“We had a good foundation in our old management system. But we wanted the new QMS to be an integrated part of our everyday work, so we set our Planner full of QMS tasks in May 2018”, says Chief Operating Officer , Ilkka Palola, who handled the QMS integration work.
“Our initial plan was to renew the QMS in two phases: first to renew QMS related to ISO 9001 and 14001 this year. And after polishing that out, replace OHSAS with ISO 45001 and integrate it into QMS in 2019. After some discussions with our auditing partner, we ended up in full integration project where all three management systems were put together. That was though and exciting. And fun too – thanks to the excellent and flexible team members.”
Unlike many people may think, ISO does not require management system to be a quality ‘manual’. The deployment of management system is up to organization´s own choice; as long as the compliance requirements are fulfilled. Prohoc implemented QMS using O365 platform, which makes it easier to control e.g. records, access, revisions, metrics and working instructions. “It turned out to be a project of trial, error & learn. As a result, we had decent QMS that serves our daily work. Naturally we have many opportunities for improvement too. And some minor non-conformities”, says Ilkka with a smile.
An overview of Prohoc QMS
The scope of QMS can be all-in-type of approach where everything the company does – or is located – is included into QMS. Or scope can be only selected processes, in certain location. We selected the full scope or our services and processes.
One example of key processes is Manage Talents, which is consisting of activities (or sub processes) like Recruit Talent, people like Recruiting manager or information that is needed or created during activities (e.g. Customer requirements, Career plan).
The standards do not define the syntax of process descriptions. We chose a function model which is straightforward and easy to implement. And we are using it in customer projects too. The downside of function model is that it does not define the timeline of activities. For that purpose, we renewed our annual clock so that each main process has now its own annual clock. One of our main purposes was to create a management system that is not a separate ‘quality manual’; but an integrated management system of our every-day-work.
“I’m quite happy where we are now. There are plenty of things we can do better like getting more feedback, automating actions and reporting, adding more intelligence to system etc. But that is what a quality management should be, finding your way, the points of improvement and doing things better”, concludes Ilkka.
Read full article from Scope Stakeholder Magazine Winter 2018/19
