If you have been reading about the ISO 14001 environmental management system, and wondering how it could both fit into and also benefit your business, it’s important to find some answers before you start. Many businesses are electing to implement an environmental management standard like 14001 each year. If you haven’t yet done so, you may wonder why it would be worth doing it.
When you decide to implement an ISO 14001 environmental management system or EMS in your business, many questions may come into your mind concerning the process. One of these will surely concern the timing of the implementation and how long it will take to achieve ISO 14001 certification.
So – you have decided to implement an ISO management standard. Whether you’re implementing one of the popular standards such as ISO 9001 for quality management or a more specialist one like ISO 13485 dealing with medical devices you can rest assured that the benefits you’ll get will make it all worthwhile.
Whichever management system or systems you are using in your organisation, you will only know how well they are operating if you conduct an internal audit of the systems to determine if they are being used efficiently and what benefits you get from operating them. The results of the audit will do one of two things:
Six Sigma is a set of tools and techniques that are used for process improvement within a business to help reduce or eliminate errors and defects. Each identified process would be assigned its own unique Six Sigma project and those assigned to the project would follow a well-defined set of steps in order to carry out the process improvement project.
Kaizen is a Japanese business concept or methodology of continuous improvement of personal efficiency and working practices that is at the core of modern quality management and lean manufacturing processes. It’s not surprising therefore that the word Kaizen, which is Japanese translates to continuous improvement.
Every organization, no matter how big or small can be broken down into multiple parts or processes that it uses to carry out every aspect of its operation. So when it comes to making improvements to its operations an organisation usually starts with identifying which processes need to be changed or improved in order to get the most bang for its buck… and this is where the Plan-Do-Check-Act cycle comes in to play.
Before we get into the discussion on the specifics of the ISO 14001 environmental management standard, let’s start with ISO and what it means. ISO stands for the International Organization of Standardization and they are recognised as the world leaders when it comes to setting the standards that businesses follow when developing their management systems. Having a well-defined path to follow makes it much easier for an organisation to achieve its management goals, which in turn goes a long way to helping the business to be successful.