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.
BS OHSAS 18001 is an occupational health and safety management system designed for use in all kinds of workplaces. Published in 1999, this popular British Standard was originally developed to protect the safety of workers by providing a framework that would ensure businesses adopting the standard would meet all minimum health and safety requirements expected of them.
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:
ISO 45001 for occupational health and safety management systems is a new international standard developed by the International Organization for Standardization in collaboration with many of the world’s leading occupational safety groups including the International Occupational Safety and Health, the American Society of Safety Engineer’s, the American Industrial Hygiene Association and the International Labour Organisation.
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.
Let’s start off by explaining what is meant by business continuity and then we will get into what ISO 22301 is all about. Business continuity in short describes how any business or organisation plans to function in the aftermath of a major disaster or severe disruption that affects that business. The ability for a business to become fully functional after a serious incident occurs is paramount, and the speed at which this happens depends mainly on how well it has prepared before the event occurs.