INTEGRATED MANAGEMENT SYSTEM: TOWARDS ITS’ FORMULATION AND IMPLEMENTATION IN MALAYSIA

ABSTRACT

In globalisation era, organisation has implemented three major management systems namely, Quality Management System series (ISO 9001:2000), Environmental Management System series (ISO 14001:1996) and Safety & Occupational Health Management System series (OHSAS 18001:1999) and incorporated them into their management strategies. These management systems helped organisations to maintain their competitiveness in the market and also benefit them in terms of environmental quality control, preserving product quality and upheld their social responsibility onto their workers and general community. However, the implementation of these systems was been done separately and has caused several problems especially in the aspects of redundancy of works, repeated procedures, higher costs, loads of documentation, time and workload. These problems arose because of the similarity on several major elements between the three systems. Thus, this research aims at identifying the characteristics and implication of separate management system by analysing and comparing the three management systems with respect to their similarities, performances and implementation barriers. The main objective of this research is to integrate all three management systems in an effort to formulate a single Integrated Management System (IMS). For this purposes, 26 organisations from around Malaysia that have been certified with all three management systems series (ISO 9001:2000, ISO 14001:1996 and OHSAS 18001:1999) from SIRIM QAS Berhad were selected as key respondents. All the key respondents are used for the identification of benefits and barriers arising from separate implementation of the three systems. Furthermore, another 30 organisations in Selangor which are certified with two management systems series (ISO 9001:2000 and ISO 14001:1996) only and 10 auditors from SIRIM QAS Berhad were selected as supportive respondents. Responses from supportive respondents are invaluable towards creating the IMS and its possible implementation in Malaysia. Results from this research found that all key respondents have benefited from the separate implementation of the systems such as increase in operational standard, increase in service efficiency, legal compliant and increasing profits. Nevertheless, they also encounter several problems such as limited expertise in implementing the systems, costs, time constraint, and disturbance on other works priority. Meanwhile, similarity of major elements in all three management systems such as in terms of policies, planning, implementation and operation procedures has caused other problems like work redundancy, repeated work procedures which lead to time wasted, increasing in costs, workloads and documentation process. These barriers have given huge implication on organisations especially in terms of operational costs. All the problems that had been encountered during separate implementation of those systems has significantly revealed the need for integrated implementation procedures that can be offered by IMS in Malaysia.

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