Introduction/Overview

Integrated Management System (IMS) is integration of various management systems and processes that an organization presently follows or intends to follow. This concept stems with the ever evolving and constantly changing global market scenario where businesses are no more restricted to certain geographical setup hence there is widespread variation in demands related to regulatory bodies and societal needs related to quality, environment, occupational health and safety, etc. ISO has also evolved over the years catering to expanding market and thus the concept of IMS also emerged where one unified management system is created that streamlines with all management systems that an organization intends to implement. IMS ensures that consistency in the processes and systems that have been established are maintained ensuring efficiency and reduction in complexities. But with this system comes it own challenges such as resistance from employees on the change, resource crunch, communication barrier, misaligned objectives, etc. Ensuring that these challenges are addressed on time is crucial to gain maximum benefit of the system.

Purpose/Importance

The main purpose of this article is to: 

• Identification of key challenges when initiating with implementation of IMS

• Formulate a suggestive action plan to breakthrough challenges

• Create a guide to take heed of certain things while implementing IMS

Components/ Important aspects to be Covered

Key things to be ensure while addressing the challenges include:

1. Engaging Interested Parties: Ensuring that organisation must engage relevant interested parties or representative of interested parties is important from the very beginning. This takes care of the need of commitment to ensure the success of IMS. Resistance to change mostly occurs when interested parties are not aligned from the beginning.
    

2. Resources: Even before roll out or plan of implementation of IMS is started, it important to understand resources eg: Manpower, machines, technology, etc are all taken into consideration while the budgeting for IMS implementation is being done. Any type of shortfall of resources will reflect in the quality of management system being implemented.
   
   

3. Processes, Operations, Documentation: Ensure to review existing processes and documentations to ensure no duplication of work is done and procedures that can be utilised are taken.
   
   

4. Competence Building: To effectively implement IMS, all team members must undergo relevant trainings. A matrix can be created with level of training required for each personnel involved in the IMS.
   
   

5. Establishing Communication Channel: The biggest barrier to any new process is lack of communication. Ensure to periodically communicate with interested parties on the implementation journey and updates. More effective if it’s a two way communication thus a more effective engagement.

Steps for the Implementation/Guide

For effective resolution of challenges in IMS implementation, following are few steps: 

Best Practices/Benefits

IMS provides an organization array of benefits from tangible to non-tangible gains.

1. Unified Approach: When the goal and objectives of the organization are clear, it becomes a solid foundation on which IMS builds. This allows for bringing everyone, right from leadership to operations team to the same ground. 
   
   

2. Maximize Productivity: IMS is bound to maximize the productivity of not just the operations but the people, machines, equipment, etc. It has a 360-degree impact on the organization. ISO standard does not ask for separate procedures to be established if an organization has started the path of implementation. Instead, it is upto the organization to establish a process to integrate but ensure the requirements of applicable standards are complied. Processes are eventually optimized.
   
   

3. Eliminating Duplication: Single most important benefit of IMS is eliminating duplication, not just in the documents/records but also multiple reviews that management or the leadership had to conduct to review effectiveness of standards individually. One single management system that includes unified policy, goals and objectives, etc. save a lot of time, effort and money.
   
   

4. Consistency: IMS approach provides an organization to create more consistent singular management system. This results in less complexity of processes, easy to understand and more focused approach towards organizational goals in large. Consistency here means even in the tiniest factors such as a common format for training records, common processes of training needs identification, communications, resource planning etc. When consistent processes are maintained to that level is when gaps between standard requirements and actual on ground implementation shrink.
   
   

5. Cost-Effectiveness: Organization’s productivity also lies on the fact how effectively one manages resources. IMS allows to integrate processes, optimizing manpower utilization, maximize machine utilizations, integrated assessments and audits and at the same time optimize on resources too. IMS helps in eliminating redundant processes, saves time and reduces cost eventually. This also means one can have one single certification audit as per the periodicity rather than engaging resources multiple times during the year. 

Conclusion

IMS (Integrating Management System) provides businesses an opportunity to streamline the processes, reduce costs, develop consistency in the approach and continually improve. However, it also carries with it some challenges such as resistance to changes, resource crunch, misaligned processes, etc. This can be overcome by a strong leadership commitment, planning, establishing communication channels, etc. Overall, IMS has been a great force in inculcating a culture of continual improvement, contribute to add value to interested parties and help manage the overall business risk and opportunities.