Outcome and Future Outlook of IMS in the Fujifilm Group

In the context of business globalization and the increasing ratio of B2B  (business-to-business) transactions, it is imperative for the Fujifilm Group to fulfill its corporate social responsibility (CSR) as a fundamental part of its corporate philosophy, while reinforcing corporate strength and facilitating structural reforms. To achieve this mission, it is necessary to establish a consistent management system covering the entire process of our business operations from planning, R&D, production, and headquarters marketing/sales. In this regard, we determined that building an IMS combined with operational issues is efficient and effective; therefore, in 2004, we started the integrated operation of IMS by the FUJIFILM headquarters, which comprises of headquarters and sales divisions, and affiliate companies. Consequently, we obtained the IMS Certification in 2006. Furthermore, we obtained the FY2015 version of ISO9001 and ISO14001 through the revision process in January 2017.

Currently, we are operating IMS with the Integrated Manual of five standards, i.e., QMS, EMS, OHSMS, ISMS, and QMCS (Query Management Certification System). Since business operations cannot be assessed by a single standard such as QMS and EMS, it is necessary to operate IMS based on multiple standards. Therefore, we are committed to IMS activities aiming to achieve total optimization and positive outcomes, by incorporating the concept of ISO into the business management system. We also utilize the PDCA cycle to “improve the quality of business operations.” This PDCA cycle is designed to reflect the intent of management in operational goals and challenges, execute action plans for such goals and challenges, conduct internal audits from the standpoint of business management, and assess the performance of these action plans.

We provide a manual that is easy to understand for employees to ensure that all of them can participate in IMS activities. With this manual, employees can satisfy the requirements of the ISO standards in the course of their business operations, without the need of understanding difficult ISO terms. We conduct IMS activities simply focusing on “Policies,” “Requirements for Quality/Environment/Customers,” “Analysis on Current Conditions,” “Improvement Plans” and “Management Review.”

We strive to horizontally disseminate improvement points identified and the best practices from internal audits and external assessments through the use of information sharing tools, and tie this to organization-wide improvement. In addition, each IMS activity unit is achieving the “improvement of the quality of business operations” by utilizing the IMS methodology for reforms and improvements in their business operations.

We will act to improve work quality by pooling our collective knowledge of all employees. Furthermore, we will endeavor to make easy to use manuals and improve activity tools in order to further improve efficiency.

Since Spring 2008, we started discussions on the integration of QMS and EMS, which had been used individually. In the field of occupational safety, on which we had been working separately from ISO certifications, we also considered to acquire the OHSAS certification and integrate it with other management systems to achieve more efficient and consistent activities.

Accordingly, we determined to introduce IMS. We established the IMS Office in Autumn 2008 to prepare for the introduction of IMS, and obtained the OHSAS certification as well as the integrated operation certification of QMS, EMS, and OHSAS in 2009.

Based on the idea of General Manager of Kanagawa Factory, “IMS is promoted to contribute to management, not ISO activities for the sake of ISO,” we are rapidly creating an IMS operation system and have obtained IMS Premium Stage operation certification.

Our activity unit comprises of the R&D divisions, and several production divisions and affiliates, with a total of about 3,000 employees. We define the fundamental factors of business management common to all these diversified business units as “environmental conservation, health and safety, and quality operations.” We aim to build a system to improve these fundamental factors across the factory and enhance its business strength.

We have established the IMS Committee composed of General Managers from each division who deliberate and determine all IMS activities. In this way, each division head can share common perceptions and information, which enables them to make decisions smoothly. 

We also established the Management System Promotion Committees responsible for improvements in each fundamental factor of “environmental conservation, health and safety, and quality operations” respectively. These committees collaborate to consolidate common issues under the integrated management. 

In the process of formulating uniform policies for the factory, we input important issues of each business unit and analyze such information from the aspects of “environment, safety and quality.” In this way, we can narrow down timely policies and important challenges while making trade-off decisions on each aspect. This process is one of the characteristics of our IMS activities.

Some time has passed since we obtained the IMS Certification, and our employees have become familiar with the operation of IMS. To improve operation processes, we achieved the visualization and complete listing of challenges by identifying important issues in each division and following up them with internal audits, etc. As a result, the IMS activities can steadily and efficiently generate positive outcomes.

Subsequently, from a management perspective, we focused on the scope of certification to two standards: environmental conservation and business quality, and further improved efficiency.

So far, we have made some achievements in the IMS activities, and at the same time, we found that there are many issues to be resolved.

The future, we will use IMS to further expand it in our workplaces so that it leads to the results we are aiming for.

Although we already had QMS and EMS, we determined to introduce IMS by adding OHSAS to enhance the occupational health and safety initiatives and integrating these systems into a single management system. By doing so, we aim to achieve total optimization of operation processes in the areas of occupational health and safety, environment, and quality. 

We started preparation to introduce IMS in Autumn 2009 and acquired the IMS certification from the Japan Quality Assurance Organization (JQA) in Summer 2011. We also obtained the Premium Stage certification in July 2015, which certifies our achievement of the criteria of above stage on the JQA Management Integration System Program.

We aim to substantively improve the quality of business operations. We avoid focusing only on IMS goals but always try to consider the overall balance of IMS activities together with business operations. To do so, we believe it is important to address our challenges always considering total optimization. Therefore, we aim to utilize the PDCA cycle in all aspects and promote the visualization and quantification of issues, education, risk management and legal compliance in the IMS activities.

First of all, we communicate the perceptions and ideas of factory representatives to our employees at a Corporate Direction meeting held at the beginning of each fiscal year. Second, we employ the PDCA cycle, under which each division creates and implements a plan to achieve their challenges, reviews the outcome of the plan at the end of each fiscal year, and reflects the review results in policies and challenges for the following year. By doing so, we encourage each employee to recognize and understand the importance of their operations that are related to each other. 

We also promote the enhancement of operational quality and business agility in the factory. To achieve this, we carry out specific activities such as extracting best practices in each workplace and disseminating them to the overall factory. We also provide employees in various workplaces with the opportunity to learn the initiatives of another workplace through internal audits and exchange ideas with each other for further improvements of business operations and increasing the dynamism of each work site.

Our initiatives to identify intrinsic issues and make improvements have been adopted by each organization, which led to effective contributions of IMS activities to business operations. Furthermore, we receive good scores more often from external assessment institutions.

We have completed the revision process for the FY2015 version of ISO 9001 and ISO 14001 in FY2017, and the revision process for ISO 45001 (new Occupational Health and Safety Management Systems Standard) in FY2020. Moving forward, we will strive to steadily achieve our intended outcomes by focusing on the risk management of occupational health and safety, environment, and quality, as well as preventing and minimizing undesirable impacts. We will promote further IMS activities to constantly improve social trust, customer satisfaction, and employee satisfaction.

We obtained ISO 9001 in 1993 and ISO 14001 in 1997. We obtained OHSAS in 2011 to reinforce the occupational health and safety initiatives in 2011, and at the same time, introduced IMS to efficiently operate the integrated management of these three standards. We established the IMS system by referencing the examples of other factories (the headquarters, Kanagawa Factory, and Fujinomiya Factory).

We, together with all employees, strive to realize the Fujifilm Basic Policy and our factory’s policies in a more intelligent, acute, powerful and rapid manner, by “smoothly utilizing the PDCA cycle at the fastest rate.”

Since we have group companies (production/production engineering and development divisions) and R&D divisions, we established the IMS Promotion Council comprising of representatives from each division to speed up the decision-making process. Policies and other decisions made at these council meetings are immediately shared with committees of each division and disseminated throughout the entire factory. In addition, we recognize the important role of internal auditors in promoting improvements at the factory. Therefore, we promote the operation of IMS by having representatives selected from each division to level up the audit quality every year.

By adopting the integrated operation of QMS, EMS and OHSAS, it becomes possible to operate three management systems with a single external assessment and internal audit, thereby reducing the workload of each division, reducing man-hours for the IMS Office, and advancing skill improvements for internal auditors. Furthermore, about two years since the establishment of a system for OHSAS, we succeeded in establishing a mechanism that enables continuous improvement. Therefore, we shifted our focus to the remaining two standards of QMS and EMS for certification from the standpoint of business management, thereby achieving further efficiency (We continue activities and internal audits based on occupational safety standards at the factory).

Our factory is characterized by the presence of various group companies (production/production engineering and development divisions) and R&D divisions. Therefore, we host monthly IMS Promotion Council meetings and implement the horizontal dissemination and visualization of IMS database usage with the aim to further enhance the organizational strength of the factory by promoting close communications and mutual understanding among these business divisions. We also expect that by steadily and promptly implementing the PDCA cycle, starting with small challenges at the individual level, the accumulation of these efforts will collectively lead to high-quality operations and outputs for each group and division, and even across the entire factory.

Since the establishment of our company in 2005, we have been working on the improvement and efficient use of management systems, considering the possibility of an integrated operation of QMS, EMS and OHSAS. Accordingly, we started building a system for IMS operations, and obtained the certification of above three standards in 2007 and the IMS certification in 2008. But we are currently emphasizing the two standards of QMS and EMS in operations from an administrative perspective. We will continue to aim for further quality improvements and operational efficiency in the future.

Since the introduction of IMS, we avoid focusing only on ISO certifications, but aim to build a system for IMS activities effectively combined with business operations, always asking ourselves how we can reflect the daily operations into the system. In addition, we avoid IMS activities merely pursuing good scores in assessments and audits, but place emphasis on activities to enhance management strength and working-level capabilities by utilizing the IMS management methodology.

All Managers have been striving to promote IMS activities combined with business management. As a result, we successfully established a system that can supplement with each other in the areas of “quality” and “environment” when setting IMS goals. Furthermore, we have utilized existing meetings to discuss the system's weaknesses and issues in organizational activities. We are always asking ourselves: “What should we do to improve the workplace? What do we need? How should we change the system?” In this way, we strive to improve operation processes by leveraging IMS activities incorporated into the daily business operations at the workplace.

As a result of the integrated operation of multiple standards, we have acquired IMS Premium Stage Assessment, and will maintain this going forward. Furthermore, we will improve business practicability and IMS operations through greater emphasis on personnel training.

We had already obtained QMS and EMS separately to enhance customer satisfaction, but further planned to acquire OHSAS in 2008 to expand the scope of our initiatives. Gradually, however, we found some issues in operating these systems, such as the necessity of manuals and audits for each system, as well as duplicated operations and inefficiency due to multiple systems. Therefore, we determined to introduce IMS for the integrated operation of these systems. We obtained the IMS certification including OHSAS in 2008.

From the perspective of risk management, it is quite inefficient to manage various kinds of requirements such as customer needs and company policy separately according to each area of “quality,” “environment” and “health and safety.” This may trigger trouble, which will lead to serious risks such as damage to customer satisfaction and our corporate value. In contrast, IMS will allow us to comprehensively capture “environment,” “quality” and “health and safety” and centrally manage various requirements as the goals of IMS. In this way, we can avoid any omissions and visualize issues. Through these activities, we are working on IMS initiatives to improve customer satisfaction and realize a safe and secure workplace. 

For IMS, risk management is a fundamental component. Therefore, we leverage FMEA (Failure Mode and Effect Analysis), which is used for OHSAS to extract risks, by applying it to the factors of “environment” and “quality.” We extract risks in the areas of “environment,” “quality” and “health and safety” using FMEA, and apply the same FMEA sheet to the extraction of issues. Therefore, we can improve operational efficiency in IMS activities by extracting risks and issues at the same time.

The system becomes holistically consistent and optimized after the integration of individual ISO standards. In addition, since the system can be combined with business management, it becomes easier to clearly communicate management policies and issues to the lower level divisions. As a result, the goals and targets of each division are likely to be consistent with that of other divisions. Accordingly, more employees came to view IMS as more practical with business operations, rather than ISO activities for audits, and willingly use the system. The use of IMS also reduces time and costs associated with the management of the system, internal audits, and external assessments. The biggest advantage of IMS is that we could establish a system to thoroughly manage risks in the areas of “environment,” “quality” and “health and safety.”

IMS is becoming popular as a tool for business operations. Moving forward, we will strive to enhance the efficiency of IMS by continuously making improvements so as to let employees comfortably use the system, thereby improving the quality of outputs.

Since the establishment of our company, we realize the necessity of establishing a system for business management as a new company for future business expansion. Therefore, we determined to introduce IMS which enables us to efficiently acquire the QMS and EMS certifications at the same time. We obtained the IMS certification in 2004, for the first time in the Fujifilm Group.

We consider the establishment of IMS as business management itself. Our corporate philosophy is “Well-Organized Prosperity” based on the three pillars of “satisfaction of customers and local communities,” “growth and development of our company” and “well-being of our employees.” To realize this philosophy, it is important to apply the PDCA cycle to all activities, considering that IMS is a system to manage all intended operations.

We tend to think that ISO matters require additional work such as documentation management and procedures. Nevertheless, we try to achieve the smooth operation of IMS, by disseminating the concept of “IMS is a system to manage all intended operations” and incorporating existing systems into IMS, instead of creating a new system. For example, we linked the budgeting process to IMS and formulated the Integrated Management Plan, which consists of budgeting operations, from extracting aspects and issues, prioritizing issues, to setting goals and policies. In addition, we created the List of Extracted Aspects and Issues by classifying aspects by category, which enables us to review and share the data. Furthermore, we position the Promotion Committee as a system audit function.

Our achievements in operations are the outcomes of IMS. Improvements in the environment and quality contributed significantly to productivity and cost-cutting. It should be noted that we have achieved significant reductions in energy consumption and CO2 emission among other Fujifilm group companies, as a result of our efforts focusing on energy-saving activities. In addition, many project activities contributed to improving the effectiveness of the system, which enables us to promptly respond to higher quality of customer needs. In the near future, we hope to see better outcomes as a result of improvements in internal and external communications.

We will maintain the steady operation of IMS as a system to improve business operations, thereby contributing to the improvements and development of the business management. Moving forward, we will enhance the capabilities of our employees such as the personnel of the promotion committee and internal audits, as well as fostering human resources who are in charge of promoting operational improvements and addressing important issues.

FUJIFILM Wako Pure Chemical Corporation obtained ISO9001 certification in 1995 and ISO14001 certification in 2000, and operates under these respective standards. Prompted by the integration into the Fujifilm Group, we began operating per IMS for more efficient business under the dual environmental and quality standards, and obtained certification in 2020.

FUJIFILM Wako Pure Chemical Corporation has emphasized each ISO compliance in business. On that point, we have raised the weight placed on efficacy directly tied to business activities, while maintaining the foundational thinking of focusing on standards that we have cultivated for so long.

IMS requires activities that take into account the trade-offs between quality and environmental aspects. Furthermore, we must consider both quality and the environment in our activities. This is the first effort and some employees have been confused, but our aim is to build a better IMS while incorporating knowledge from the Fujifilm Group.

We handle a wide range of products, from laboratory chemicals to life sciences materials and specialty chemicals. The acts of design and development, sales, marketing, research, manufacturing and testing these products fall under the IMS scope, as do many sites involved. Including FUJIFILM Wako Chemical Corporation (Hiratsuka site and Hirono site), which was integrated into the FUJIFILM Wako Pure Chemical Group last year, the current scope of FUJIFILM Wako Pure Chemical IMS comprises 13 sites. We are progressing on routine communication in order to standardize operational rules for these sites, including information sharing between the parties responsible for environmental and quality management.

Integrating operations has reduced the burden of work on each division through integration of the individual audits of the past into a single external audit. Furthermore, considering the trade-offs between quality and environmental aspects has enabled us to identify and act on issues from a management perspective. As a result, the integrated program was upgraded to Stage II at the FY2021 audit, it has being maintained.

Going forward, we aim to further improve business efficiency by effectively implementing the PDCA cycles.

The effective functioning of the PDCA cycles should be checked through internal audits. Currently, in order to improve the quality of internal auditors, the IMS Office of FUJIFILM Wako Pure Chemical Corporation is taking the lead in enhancing the skills of internal auditors as a whole.

Since our first president’s term in the 1990s, along with our affiliates we have progressed with acquisition of certification in ISO management systems (QMS/EMS/ISMS/OHSAS) to promote customer-directed activity, and quality improvements in manufacturing and sales functions, as well as all fields of business. Subsequently, we endeavored to adopt IMS in aims of acquiring a comprehensive certification for all companies and improving operational efficiency. With the update of ISO standards to the 2015 Edition, FUJIFILM Business Innovation Corp. and Japanese affiliates collectively obtained integrated certification for QMS/EMS/ISMS (for sectors subject to OHSAS only) in January 2016.

We aim to use IMS as a tool to support management, and to contribute toward achievement of business targets through improvement of on-site performance via repeated business process improvement cycles. Moreover, acquisition of IMS for all three sectors will allow us to reduce environmental impact, strengthen data security, and improve customer satisfaction in sectors of emphasis per business characteristics.

In order to avoid making these activities for the purpose of ISO certification acquisition, we are incorporating ISO requirements into management and business structures and working to respond to standard requirements through reliable business processes. Within IMS activities, we are working to connect the smaller, division-level improvement cycle, and the larger, management and business-level cycle. For example, we are setting internal auditing priorities for each organization, based on the auditing guidelines for all companies. Furthermore, we implement company-wide integrated internal audits based on the internal audit results for each organization, and repeat the larger improvement cycle of identifying risks and points cited on a company-wide level.

With the 2016 integration of standards between FUJIFILM Business Innovation Corp. and Japanese affiliates, we have been able to greatly reduce man-hours involved in promotion activities, as well as document generation. We have gained the ability to assess the status of all domestic organizations in greater detail, and we have constructed a system for assessing and resolving shared management issues as a whole, rather than individually.

We hope to advance with contributions to business results through MS activities that can adapt to changes in the business environment and targets. In particular, we will further strengthen our efforts to assess risks and improve our on-site capabilities in their preventative role.

• *1 FUJIFILM Kyushu and FUJIFILM Opto-Materials changed to FUJIFUILM MATERIAL MANUFACTURING CO.,LTD. on July 1, 2023.