Management Review

One of the requirements of ISO 9001 is 5.6 Management Review.  The idea is that periodically, management reviews the effectiveness of the quality management system (QMS) and determines what changes are necessary to improve it.  It is the responsibility of the Management Representative to prepare these reviews.

ISO 9001 has very specific requirements for the inputs and outputs of the management review process.  The required inputs are:

·         Results of audits

·         Customer feedback

·         Process performance and product conformity

·         Status of preventive and corrective actions

·         Follow-up from previous management reviews

·         Changes that could affect the QMS

·         Recommendations for improvement

To these, I like to add data analysis results.  It’s not required, but it makes a lot of sense.  The standard expects data analysis from various processes to be used as inputs to the preventive action process.  Why not share these analyses with management? This allows them to be involved in selecting those actions to work on.  It also documents the data analysis, which is evidence that we are complying with section 8.4 Analysis of data.

An example of data analysis is on time delivery to customers.  We might study late deliveries by product, and do a simple Pareto analysis to identify the worst offenders.  A recommendation for improvement might be to study the top five late delivered products to identify the root causes.

One of the outputs of the management review should be action items:

·         What are we going to do?

·         Who’s responsible for getting it done?

·         When will it be done?

These action items will become inputs to the next management review.

Attendance

Attendance should include all senior management, all middle managers, and any other employees on the implementation team.  Senior management must be involved and aware; middle managers are the ones who will agree to get things done.  If it is important enough to be ISO 9001 certified it’s important enough for these people to attend.

Frequency of Meetings

The standard is moot on frequency except to say that these reviews should be at ‘planned intervals.’  The external auditor will frown on reviews held less frequently than annually.  Some companies have these meetings annually.  In my last company we held them quarterly. 

There’s a lot of work in putting on an annual management review.  The meetings can take a couple of hours or more.  It’s hard to schedule required attendees into a long meeting.  It’s better to spread the work out.

Personally I don’t believe in separate QMS reviews.  Rather, I believe that management should meet at least monthly to review the entire business, and one component of this review should be a review of the QMS.  Review some parts of the QMS every month, and some less frequently.

For example, consider reviewing product quality, on time delivery to customers, and action items monthly, audits and preventive actions quarterly, customer feedback and external audit results annually, etc.  This approach assures that:

·         all requirements in the review process are met,

·         the work is spread out over time and there is less preparation for any one meeting,

·         the QMS is kept in focus by middle and senior management because they hear about it every month,

·         the review of the QMS is integrated into the business instead of being a separate activity

Management Review is one of the key components of ISO 9000.  Periodic review of the QMS is important.  After all, installing and supporting a QMS costs money.  It's important for management to assure that the QMS is effective.  What better way to assure that we're not wasting our money than to take a look at what we're getting for what we're spending.

For more information on ISO 9001 implementation see www.rosehillsystems.com