Integrated management systems: on the path to maturity and efficiency assessment

Abstract

The results from an online survey focusing Portuguese integrated management system (IMS) ruled companies are presented in the present article. These are partial results from an ongoing project aiming the maturity rating and assessment of IMS and companies where implemented. Surveyed companies match partially the national Portuguese profile, namely, on geographic location and company dimension characteristics. Results suggest that motivations, benefits and obstacles related to integration are internal or mainly internal. A sequential over a step by step or “all in” integration sequence as been reported as the most common one among the surveyed companies. Integrated audits seem to be the model adopted by the majority of the companies. Systems managers found implementation sub-systems standards easy or, at least, reasonably easy, to integrate. A major dividing point between surveyed companies is related to the identification of organizational items not susceptible of being integrated. Approximately 55% of the surveyed companies identified those items while 45% did not. Systems managers’ majority did not felt that an ultimate excellence level of integration had been reached by their companies but rather a high integration level corresponding to common organizational structure plus policies and goals, management tools and documental integration. All respondents felt that the overall company performance would be lower (79%) or at least equal (21%) if running through separate management sub-systems. Almost totally agreed that IMS is an add value to the company. Related to responsibility it seem that companies option rely on traditional pyramidal model with an IMS coordinator and a QMS, an EMS and/or an OHSMS sub-systems responsible providing feedback. Finally, process, operations and management monitoring was assessed by the survey. Almost all companies agreed that monitoring was performed by key process indicators (KPI’s), operations process indicators (OPI’s) or management process indicators (MPI’s). Similar results were found when asked about integrated indicators.