Indianapolis, Indiana
ISO 45001 consulting for Indianapolis manufacturers.
Indiana runs an inspection programme targeted at manufacturing, with a published directive and a route off the targeting list. That route is not ISO 45001 — and knowing the difference is worth money.
We work in the Kansas City metro. Engagements here run remotely, with on-site visits at the points where being in the building changes the outcome — gap analysis, internal audit, and the certification audits themselves. We do not maintain an office in this market and would rather say so than imply otherwise.
A directive with a number, a date and a target list
Most state safety programmes are described in general terms. Indiana published a directive, and it is worth reading.
SEP-IOSHA-HH Manufacturing — the Emphasis Program for High Nonfatal Occupational Injury and Illness Rates in Indiana Manufacturing Industry Groups — took effect on 21 March 2025, signed by the Commissioner of Labor. It runs for five years from that date unless renewed.
Its stated rationale is a comparison: Bureau of Labor Statistics data put Indiana's overall nonfatal injury and illness rate for 2023 at 2.6 per 100 full-time equivalents, and Indiana manufacturing at 3.0 — which the directive describes as more than fifteen per cent higher than the state's overall rate.
It targets the five four-digit manufacturing industry groups with the highest rates, refreshed annually, split into north, central and south targeting lists. Inspections under it are comprehensive in scope. Establishments need ten or more employees. And compliance officers review OSHA 300 logs, 300A summaries and 301 reports for five prior calendar years, and verify electronic submission.
Industry in Indianapolis
- IOSHA emphasis programme SEP-IOSHA-HH Manufacturing, effective 21 March 2025, targets manufacturing industry groups whose injury rates run more than fifteen percent above the state average
- INSHARP Certified employers are exempt from programmed IOSHA inspections. INSHARP does not mention ISO 45001 anywhere — the standard is how you build the system, not a shortcut into the programme
- Eli Lilly, Lebanon In Boone County and in the metro — but making drugs and active ingredients under pharmaceutical CGMP in 21 CFR 210 and 211, not under ISO 13485
- Rolls-Royce and Allison Transmission AS9100 and IATF 16949 respectively. Both major employers here, and both outside what we offer
- The non-automotive base Most of the metro's 1,445 small manufacturers are outside the automotive chain, and outside the IATF territory we do not serve
The part worth acting on is how you get off the list
Buried in the directive is the deletion criterion, and it is the most commercially useful sentence in the document. An establishment is removed from the targeting list if it is “exempted from programmed inspections due to a cooperative program such as active VPP and INSHARP sites.”
INSHARP — Indiana's Safety and Health Achievement Recognition Program — confirms the benefit on its own page: certified employers receive exemption from programmed IOSHA compliance inspections for the period their certification is valid. Complaint, catastrophe and fatality inspections are excluded, as you would expect.
Eligibility requires DART and total recordable case rates below the national average for three consecutive years, plus a documented safety and health management programme.
And here is what we are not going to tell you
INSHARP does not mention ISO 45001 anywhere. We read the programme description. ISO 45001 is not a prerequisite, it is not an alternative route, and holding it does not confer INSHARP status.
We are being emphatic because the opposite claim is exactly what a consultant with something to sell would make, and it would be wrong.
The honest version is still worth your time. INSHARP requires a documented safety and health management programme that at minimum addresses OSHA's programme management guidelines, plus three years of injury rates below the national average. ISO 45001 is a well-built, externally audited way to construct and evidence such a programme — and the rate performance is what a functioning safety management system produces over time. What gets you off the targeting list is INSHARP. What makes INSHARP achievable is having run a real system for three years first.
That is a three-year argument, not a certificate argument, and we would rather make the accurate one.
Which industries are actually targeted, and one honest limit
The 2025 targeting list named five groups: foundries (total recordable case rate 6.9), motor vehicle manufacturing (6.4), other wood products (5.1), motor vehicle body and trailer (4.8), and veneer, plywood and engineered wood (4.7).
The 2026 list is not published. Appendix B of the posted directive is blank — it says so explicitly. We are not going to guess at it.
And a limit we should state rather than let you find out later: two of those five groups are motor vehicle, and automotive supplier flow-down runs through IATF 16949, which we do not offer. The part of this programme we can genuinely help with is foundries, wood products, and whatever the 2026 list adds outside automotive.
A second Indiana programme that does name ISO
The Indiana Department of Environmental Management runs an Environmental Stewardship Program, and unlike INSHARP it names the standard directly: an organisation applying for or renewing membership must have had a third-party audit within the last 36 months against the ISO 14001 standard or an alternative Independent Assessment Protocol. Members receive regulatory flexibility and public recognition.
Two caveats, both of which we would want you to know before you build a plan around it. ISO 14001 is one of two routes, not the only one. And we could not verify that the programme is actively administered in 2026 — the membership roster page returns an error and the department publishes no current numbers. The application route appears live. We would phone IDEM before committing to it, and we would tell you the same thing if you asked. See ISO 14001.
What we could not find here, and what that means
We looked for a distinctive ISO 9001 anchor in Indianapolis and did not find one. There is no state programme naming it, no dominant local prime publishing a public requirement for it, and no industry credential built on it that we could verify.
That is why this page leads with safety rather than quality, even though quality is the larger part of our business. A page needs a real reason to exist in a specific market, and Indianapolis' real reason is the emphasis programme.
Two more things worth stating for accuracy. Eli Lilly's very large investment at Lebanon is genuinely in this metro — Boone County is a central county of the MSA. But it makes drug substances and active pharmaceutical ingredients, regulated under pharmaceutical current good manufacturing practice at 21 CFR 210 and 211, not under ISO 13485. Any page telling you that Lilly's expansion means device quality system demand has made a jump the facts do not support.
And the metro has 1,610 manufacturing establishments, 1,445 of them under 100 employees (US Census County Business Patterns, 2023), with roughly 90 FDA-registered device establishments — which places it around the middle of comparable metros. Real, but not the story.
How we work with companies here
We are based in the Kansas City metro and run Indianapolis engagements remotely, with on-site work where being in the building changes the outcome — the gap analysis walkthrough, the first internal audit, and the certification audits.
For safety management work the on-site portion is not optional in the same way. Hazard identification and the risk assessment that follows from it are done by walking the floor with the people who work it, not by reviewing a register.
The consultant who scopes the engagement does the work. No handoff to a junior implementer after the sale.
What an engagement covers
- ISO 45001 system build An occupational health and safety management system built around your actual hazards, with the hazard identification and risk assessment done on the floor rather than from a template. See ISO 45001.
- Compliance obligations register for IOSHA Indiana runs its own OSHA-approved State Plan covering private-sector workers. A register assembled from federal sources will be structurally wrong here.
- Injury rate performance The three-year DART and total recordable case record that INSHARP eligibility turns on. This is what a working system produces, and it is why the argument is a three-year one.
- Incident investigation and corrective action Clause 10.2 done so the record survives scrutiny — compliance officers under the emphasis programme review five prior years of OSHA 300, 300A and 301 records.
- ISO 14001 for the IDEM programme Indiana's Environmental Stewardship Program names a third-party ISO 14001 audit within 36 months as one of two routes to membership.
- Gap analysis and roadmap Two to four weeks, fixed scope and price, with a clear go or no-go before real money is committed.
- ISO 9001 where it is the actual need Quality management for manufacturers whose customers are asking for it — see ISO 9001. We did not find a distinctive local driver for it here, and we would rather say so.
Questions we get from companies in this market
Does ISO 45001 get us into INSHARP?
No, and we want to be unambiguous because the opposite claim is what a consultant with something to sell would make. INSHARP does not mention ISO 45001 anywhere in its programme description. It is not a prerequisite and it does not confer status. What INSHARP requires is a documented safety and health management programme addressing OSHA's programme management guidelines, plus DART and total recordable case rates below the national average for three consecutive years. ISO 45001 is a good way to build and evidence such a programme, and the rate performance is what a working system produces over time — but the certificate is not the qualification.
Why does INSHARP matter?
Because of a specific sentence in the emphasis programme directive. Establishments are deleted from the targeting list if they are exempted from programmed inspections through a cooperative programme such as active VPP or INSHARP. And INSHARP's own page confirms certified employers receive exemption from programmed IOSHA compliance inspections while their certification is valid. Complaint, catastrophe and fatality inspections still apply. So INSHARP is the documented route off a list your industry may be on.
Is our industry on the targeting list?
The 2025 list named foundries, motor vehicle manufacturing, other wood products, motor vehicle body and trailer manufacturing, and veneer, plywood and engineered wood. The 2026 list has not been published — Appendix B of the posted directive is explicitly blank — so we are not going to guess at it. Worth noting that two of the five 2025 groups are automotive, and automotive flow-down runs through IATF 16949, which we do not offer.
Does Eli Lilly's Lebanon investment create ISO 13485 demand?
No, and this is a jump we see made. Lebanon is genuinely inside this metro — Boone County is a central county of the MSA, and the investment is very large. But the site makes drug substances and active pharmaceutical ingredients, regulated under pharmaceutical current good manufacturing practice at 21 CFR 210 and 211, which is a different regime from the device quality system regulation. We could not verify any Lilly requirement or supplier flow-down operating to ISO 13485, so we are not going to imply one.
Why does this page lead with safety rather than quality?
Because we looked for a distinctive ISO 9001 driver in Indianapolis and could not find one — no state programme names it, no dominant local prime publishes a public requirement for it, and no local industry credential is built on it that we could verify. Quality management is the larger part of our business, and we still do it here. But a page should have a real reason to exist in a specific market, and Indianapolis' real reason is the emphasis programme. Padding it out with generic quality content would make it worse, not better.
What will certification cost?
Audit days are set from the number of people within your certification scope against a published table, then adjusted for factors including system maturity and single-site operation. Our certification cost breakdown reproduces the table so you can check any quote you receive against it.
Other standards we support in Indianapolis
Other standards in Indianapolis
This page is about ISO 45001, which is what this metro's industry asks for most often. We cover these here too.
- ISO 9001 in Indianapolis Indiana's biggest manufacturing names sit in credentials we cannot serve. The 1,445 small manufacturers around them are a different market, and it is the larger one.