How Companies Can Save Costs: One Management System Instead of Many Parallel Worlds

Following on from my article of 30.09.2026, I would like to take the topic of waste in quality management a little further.

The quality management system as an additional structure

In many companies, alongside the management system that is lived in everyday work anyway, there is a second one: the formal quality management system. It usually arises with good intentions, for example for a certification or because customers demand it. In practice, however, it runs alongside the actual business processes instead of merging into them.

Parallelism consumes resources

A parallel system needs to be maintained. It takes up staff, time and attention, and companies do notice this consumption of resources. Often, however, it is booked as the unavoidable price of quality. Many companies do not see that one cause lies in the duplicate structure.

The literature names duplicated effort, higher complexity, increased administrative costs, bureaucratic burden and the organizational isolation of the subsystems as disadvantages of non-integrated systems [5]. For small and medium-sized enterprises it is also described that they often adopt ISO 9000 rather symbolically, i.e. with limited integration into everyday work [6].

How high these costs are cannot be quantified in general. Even the VDA volume on quality-related costs states that prevention costs, which it counts to include the quality management system, cannot be captured in a key-figure model owing to a lack of delimitability. Only failure costs such as scrap, rework or warranty are recorded in monetary terms there [7]. In my view, duplicated work and coordination effort at the interfaces of parallel structures nevertheless tie up resources, even if this is hard to quantify in an individual case.

In addition, it is rare for things to stop at one parallel structure. Further management systems and requirements are added alongside quality management, such as environmental management (ISO 14001), energy management (ISO 50001), occupational health and safety (ISO 45001) and sustainability. In many companies, each of these topics gets its own structure next to the existing ones. Companies then find that these structures become less and less efficient. This is hardly surprising: each additional parallel structure itself consumes resources.

What research and practice show

Research supports the core of this thought. A literature review of twelve evaluated empirical studies concludes that companies that integrate ISO 9001 deeply into their daily routines achieve better operational and business results than companies that only meet the certification requirements. Intrinsic motivation leads to better embedding than external pressure [8].

There is also evidence for the integration of several management systems. A study of certified Spanish companies distinguishes three levels of integration and finds that higher levels of integration lead to greater internal benefits [9]. A case study of 14 Brazilian industrial companies names better operational efficiency, faster decisions and higher product quality as benefits [10].

Integration is, however, not an all-or-nothing decision. In a survey of 435 Spanish companies, 83 percent stated that they integrate their systems partially or fully, to varying depths in areas such as objectives, documentation, personnel and procedures [11]. Integration itself also takes effort: the Brazilian case study names the complexity of the integration process and the high resource requirements as the greatest difficulty [10]. Lack of resources, skepticism in middle management, insufficient involvement of employees and resistance to change are also named as obstacles [5].

In my view, integration can save resources and costs. The studies reviewed here do not quantify this, nor do they examine whether and to what extent quality departments can shrink as a result.

Responsibility lies with top management

Such a model is consistent with the requirements of ISO 9001. According to Clause 5.1.1, top management must take accountability for the effectiveness of the quality management system and support other managers in demonstrating their leadership in their areas of responsibility. Where the management system is de facto regarded as the task of the quality department, this basic idea of the standard is missed [1].

A management representative appointed by top management has no longer been explicitly required since the 2015 edition; the tasks have passed to top management. Comparable responsibilities and authorities are still assigned, but there is no requirement for a single appointed person [1, National Foreword and Table A.1]. According to DQS, most companies nevertheless retain the function of the quality management representative, in a supporting role, for example in training, internal audits and improvement [13].

The revision of ISO 9001 published in September 2026 reinforces this approach. According to DQS and TÜV NORD (date of the TÜV source: January 2026), top management must actively promote a quality culture, and quality policy and quality objectives are to be aligned more closely with the corporate strategy [14][15].

Conclusion

A management system that top management is responsible for and that the value-creating areas live is more efficient than several systems running side by side. The quality department is not abolished in the process. It becomes the advisory body that helps the company anchor quality and the other management topics where they take effect.

The Short Check on the QualiTEx Global website offers a first assessment of your own situation [18].