Quality, Environment and Health Integrated Management Systems: A Literature Review

Abstract

The context of the research made in this article is the harsh economic environment where in order to stay on the market organizations need to reduce production cost to make more profit but also to meet the quality, environment, and health and safety requirements. The implementation of the standards in the organization involve an allocation of resources both human and financial and all this are time consuming, the necessity of implementing two or more standards make this allocation of resources to increase, in this conditions applying an integrated standards model is shown to be a more effective way then applying the standards independently. The problem that arises is that in order to adopt the integrated version of standards there have to be made some changes at the organizational level. This article analyzes the principal models of integration management systems found in the literature, highlights the benefits of the three standards. This article can be also used as a base for future studies regarding the integrated management systems and future implementation of other management systems like the management system of innovation.