An integrated process-based HSE management system: A case study

Nowadays, companies are not only focused on achieving goals such as cost savings and increasing efficiency and profitability, but are also making a great deal of effort to add other social and environmental goals to their agenda, often including concerns related to health, safety and the environment (HSE). To achieve their HSE goals, organizations are required to have the processes associated with HSE components designed and developed in a single system. However, the organizations dependence on software becomes evident when macro-level managerial decisions are made based on all the data entered and stored in the organizations’ systems such as procurement, logistics, manufacturing, maintenance, and other related systems all of which might be isolated and separated from each other. These systems may provide a variety of features for organizations, but the lack of integration between them makes it difficult to interact and collaborate with the other processes of the organization. Therefore, the critical point is the integration of these systems in a comprehensive enterprise software. This integration challenge is due to the interdependency and the complexity of the data transmission as well as the relationships among various parts of the organization. To shed some light on the integration complexities this paper is intended to propose an approach to tackle these issues by designing an integrated HSE system with all its processes, features, and connections through an industrial enterprise resource planning (ERP) system. To illustrate the applicability of the system in an industrial context, we conduct a case study of the implementation of this HSE system in the mining industry and closely scrutinize the integration-related challenges faced during this process of software analysis, development and deployment.