Do’s and Don’ts

Coordinate management review with management other business review meetings. Conducting “management review” during regular business review meetings gives the sense that the management systems is part of the overall business. Management reviews conducted infrequently and apart from the other important business management meetings leads to a silo-ed perception of the management system.

Make management review value added. Ensure the information being presents is actionable by leadership. Give them a few choices for recommendations with supporting information and ask them to decide. They will appreciate your opinion and recommendations to help make decisions.

Do the Math and Have Backup.

Defend your recommendations for improvement with cost and return on investment information. Showing leadership how the management system helps save and even makes money, contributes to their support and commitment.

Take Good Notes

Recording leadership decisions during the management review helps ensures follow-up. Records of management review are also evidence of their leadership commitment, especially during audits.

Timely Management Review Follow-up

Follow-up on management review recommendations in a timely fashion and report on progress at the next management review opportunity. This will enhance leaderships perception of the management system, their support and commitment.

Management Review Frequency

Most organizations perform periodic reviews of the business performance to make sure things are going along smoothly and to make any course corrections needed. Integrating the ISO system management review with these regular business review meetings will help ensure that:

• Management system performance issues are addressed in a timely fashion
• The management system is integrated with all other business processes
• Timely information is provided to leadership to help make important business decisions

Management Review Inputs

Management review meetings should not necessarily address all management review inputs during each meeting. Management review inputs that should be reviewed at every management review include:

• Follow-up from previous management reviews
• Status of actions from previous management reviews;
• Status of corrective actions and incident investigation
• Progress toward achieving objectives.

Management review inputs to be reviewed less frequently and as needed such as

• Customer Complaints and interested party concerns
• Changes including new compliance obligations
• Adequacy of resources
• changes in risks and how they are being addressed
• Audit results

Management Review Outputs

The purpose of management review is to ensure the management system is able to achieve it intended outcomes. The outputs of management review are an important part of the Act part of the Plan-Do-Check-Act continual improvement cycle. It is where leadership has the opportunity to review the information generated in the “Check part of the PDCA cycle and intervene (Act) and continually improve the management system

Records of management review are the notes of the meeting (output notes). They are required by all ISO management system standards. Outputs are what leaderships asks the organization to do to improve performance. These records are also excellent evidence of leadership commitment during third party audits.

Conclusion

The goal of management review is to provide information to leadership that it can act on. Planning and conducting good management reviews will enhance leaderships opinion and support of the management system.