28th February 2019

What is a Management System?

What is a Management System?

A management system is a set of policies, procedures and processes which define how an organisation plans to achieve its objectives.

There are a range of standards from different organisations which set out the requirements for a management system to achieve effective management of particular aspects of their activities. This includes, but is not limited to

Standard setting organisations include ISO, FSC, BSI and PAS.

Common Management Systems

Launch

Management System Benefits

  • Achieve your organisational objectives
  • Internationally recognised (i.e. ISO)
  • Win more work
  • Reduce bid costs
  • Manage legal obligations
  • Reduce Risk
  • Minimise environmental impact
  • Improve customer satisfaction
  • Increase efficiency
  • Maximise profits
  • Increase employee engagement
  • Achieve continual improvement

ISO Standards

ISO is the International Organisation for Standardisation and they approve and maintain different standards across a wide range of topics. Initially all standards were managed in isolation, but they have recently begun to align many of their standards with a document called Annex SL. This sets common requirements across different standards which makes it easier to integrate different standards at the same organisation. This includes context of your organisation, leadership, planning, support, operation, performance evaluation and improvement. Different ISO standards then have different requirements within the Annex SL framework which are specific to the standard.

The requirements in any ISO standard can be thought of as a guiding framework, setting out what a company needs to include, but not how it needs to implement them. We have drawn on our experience of supporting and auditing hundreds of companies to bring you what we think is best practice, but which can also be adapted to your needs.

We currently offer ISO 9001 Quality and ISO 14001 Management Systems, and will be adding to these in the future.

ISO 9001 Quality Management

9001 is the most popular ISO standard and usually the first ISO standard that companies acquire. It sets out requirements for implementing a quality management system and applies to both products and services. Much of ISO 9001s requirements are simply good business management practice including managing resources, infrastructure and testing/inspection.

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ISO 14001 Environmental Management

14001 is the second most popular ISO standard and is usually the second ISO standard that organisations acquire. ISO 14001 helps you to identify your environmental impacts and determine how you can manage and minimise them. Requirements specific to 14001 include identifying environmental aspects and impacts, compliance obligations and emergency procedures.

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