Regional cluster approaches

Some small and medium-sized organisations are willing to implement an high standard EMS, but they don’t dispose of the personal and financial capacity. To help those organisations, there are existing a number of innovative cluster and convoy approaches on a regional level. The target of these approaches is, to implement an EMS in a number of small and medium-sized organisations in a collaborative way.

Cluster approaches can help these SMEs to reduce the costs of external consulting and external auditing. It also enables them to be part of a dynamic networkin order to exchange relevant information and gain more visibility.

In these approaches the organisations are profiting especially by sharing the cost of the external consultation and by sharing the knowledge of the different organisations. With these approaches even very small organisations are able to implement an EMS with international standard.

In this chapter you will find a description of such innovative cluster and convoy approaches.