Operation Assessment of ISO 14001 : 2004 Environmental Management System in Manufacturing Industry of Southeastern Korea
Environmental pollution including air, land, and water has become one of the most critical issues in global interest. The damages due to environmental pollution lead to serious disasters. Nations have realized the importance of environment protection and have been starting to force organizations to implement environmental management system (EMS) as way of protecting environment. ISO 14001 requirements that are the most popular standard as EMS have been developed to support continuous improvement to environment management. It has been revised once since publication and ISO 14001 : 2004 version is currently available. Organizations globally started to acquire the certificate of EMS to observe environment related laws, accept customers’ and stakeholders’ request, increase market share, and fulfill implementation motives. This article examines the audit data that were collected for several years from manufacturing companies including shipbuilding, machinery, metal, automobiles, and chemical companies in southeastern Korea on the basis of ISO 14001 : 2004 requirements. The audit data were classified into minor nonconformities based on factors such as business size, business type, and EMS implementation period. We conduct hypotheses test using statistical methods in order to see if there are any significant differences based on the factors. We draw conclusions for the results of hypotheses test and address the necessities of energy, greenhouse gas, green management, and continuous improvement to enhance the efficiency of EMS implementation.