Management Systems

What is a management system?

There are several organisations that provide standards for how to design and implement each respective Management System that also provides audits and certifications which is a common requirement in larger procurements. Some examples of common organisations are:

• International Organisation for standardisation (ISO)
• International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC)
• British Standards Institution (BSI)
• National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)
• Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA)

An Integrated Management System

It is common today to have multiple management systems within an organisation and each management system has components that are required in several of the management systems. An example can be Document Management, a discipline how to structure, manage the lifecycle and ensure document control. Instead of defining one Document Management asset for each management system, it is good practice to define an organisation wide Document Management asset, that is referred to from all management systems (and other assets as well). This ensures reusability, consistency and less waste of maintenance efforts as well as reduced complexity.

By doing this, we are starting to integrate the management system components by reusing and sharing them. This is the basis of an integrated management system. By defining each common and shared asset once for all management systems, one reduces the complexity and increases the integrity and effectiveness of the whole system.

How Management Systems are used in practice

Management systems are used to systematically and clearly define how an organisation shall operate to fulfil its objectives as well ensuring systematic continual improvement.

As companies grow, the need to establish clear systems for how to manage the organisation according to internal and external requirements increases to ensure consistency and compliance. Management systems are used to establish standard ways of working within an organisation. It is however not uncommon that this standardisation is coherent, but more a combination of islands with no, weak or contradicting instructions.

It is becoming more and more common that certified management systems are required in procurements. This is a way for the customer to reduce risk and get an objective assurance that the supplier has a mature and well functioning organisation. The challenge is that every company has their own implementation of a management system, as the standard organisations does not define how it shall be implemented, only high-level requirements on what is implemented. This means that the language is not consistent between organisations, making mapping the internal assets with the questions in the procurement a nightmare (since every procurement is unique as well).

The CUBE® Framework is designed to integrate management systems as well as collaboration between organisations

The CUBE® Framework if implemented correctly and completely is fully aligned with management system design and requirements. The Asset Structure is based on best practice Document Management structure and the Asset Architecture is designed to enable an integrated management system structure. This makes getting and maintaining certifications easier and requires less effort.

The interaction between organisations can also be improved. In the case of procurements, if both organisations are aligned with the CUBE® framework, mapping requirements with answers becomes much easier for the supplier and the customer would get higher quality answers as well as better collaboration if the contract is signed as the language and structure is already established.