THE ISSUES MANAGEMENT PROCESS

Phuoc D. Nguyen

Without any issues management process is perfect, the organization should consult some issues management processes/models to apply or integrate some models/processes to establish its own issues management procedure to manage issues appropriately to its resources, skills, qualifications, and culture; the procedure should be periodically reviewed and continual improved that suitable for each period of the organization’s growth and development. The issues management audit is audited based on compliance with the steps in the approved procedure and audits the results of issues management. Furthermore, auditors must refer to a few national, regional, local standards, criteria, regulations, and policies; and applicable laws.

Ashley and Morrison’s (1995) Issues Management Process is missing steps of root causes analysis, corrective actions, and preventive actions implementation. This process has the step of action plan implementation which focuses on the identified issues ‘correction’, it has not focused on corrective actions and preventive actions implementation. This process has not been revised and updated yet so far from 1995 till now which have several tools of root cause analysis and relevant management tools have been created by management gurus around the world.

ISO 9000:2005 Sec. 3.6 defines the correction, corrective action, and preventive action as follows:

Correction – Action to eliminate a detected nonconformity

Corrective action – Action to eliminate the cause of a detected nonconformity

Preventive action – Action to eliminate the cause of a potential nonconformity (9000Store, n.d.).

Moreover, 9000 Store suggests tools and applications to assess the risk and mitigate such as Checklists

Failure Mode & Effects Analysis (FMEA), Hazard and Operability Analysis (HAZOP), and Fault Tree Analysis (FTA). Protiviti’s (n.d.) Agile Issues Management Life Cycle included key components of Issue Identification, Root Cause Analysis, Corrective Action, and Validation and Sustainability. However, it was missing a component of preventive action implementation.

Jaques (2010) suggests Embedding issue management as a strategic element of crisis prevention. An effective preventive process fundamentally requires the capacity to scan the environment, gather information, assess and evaluate that information, and turn it into action. Issue management provides a framework for such an integrated process, which can operate across functions and into the highest levels of management (p. 478). Mindtools (n.d.) suggests tools to identify causal factors such as Appreciation, 5 Whys, Drill Down, Cause, and Effect Diagram. It is suggested that we should integrate and supplement Protivity’s (n.d.) Agile Issues Management Life Cycle’s components of Root Cause Analysis and Corrective Action into Ashley and Morrison’s (1995) Issues Management Process. Additionally, supplementing the Preventive Action step into the Corrective Action step included Jaques’ (2010) Embedding Issue Management. The Root Cause Analysis step is before the Corrective Action and Preventive Action step and after the Organizational Objectives Development step. However, the root cause analysis step needs coordination between the organization and its stakeholders, this is a barrier to implementing this step. Corrective action is very important because it helps eliminate issues’ root causes so that the issues cannot recur or be difficult to recur, whereas preventive action helps prevent issues from happening.