Management Review - Alternative methods

Q

qltyscope1

Quality Pros:

Please provide your experiences of alternate meeting methods to conduct and be compliant to requirement 5.6 of ISO 9001, management review.

The alternate method/s is to avoid having all managers meeting in a room at the same time during a defined meeting. Instead, we would like to find a method that is more agile and capable to be done outside of a meeting room. Since "meeting" is not a requirement, what other method are there. I tried reading the links in this website, and for some reason none actually defined a method.

Do you know of some company or yourself that has conducted management review differently? Can you please share the methods and steps. Thanks

Can you
 

AndyN

Moved On
Firstly, it's going to depend on three key issues:

Your management culture,
Your objectives for the review format and,
How you conduct the review currently.

If you have a culture of support and trust between top management and each process owner, a meeting won't help. If they actively participate in the review (meeting) currently and could achieve the same results without meeting, fine. If they bring data, performance indicators and results, along with actions, to the meeting, they can do this just as well from their offices.

If, however, you don't have a culture of collaboration and each process owner cannot be relied upon the be open and honest about their process, performance etc. then allowing them to review remotely will not improve anything. Added to which, if the current review is done without them each taking the lead and it's done in terms of "ISO blah, blah, blah" and the MR does all the talking, it's this which needs changing.

You may wish to tell us more about why a meeting isn't working (apparently)
 
Q

qltyscope1

We have a large management team and company does not want to allocate significant amount of managers' time to be inside a meeting room reviewing data. Management prefers a method that would be more flexible and yet effective conducted outside a meeting room. That's what we'd welcome to see if someone had done it differently, and could share (not the data of course), but how they did it.
We are doing very well, the MReview definitely is an issue due to time constraint.
 

insect warfare

QA=Question Authority
Trusted Information Resource
My company does management review through meetings (twice a year) and they work just fine for us. I also worked for a company that did this over the phone between 6-7 people, and had someone recording minutes (which was fine), but it did not have the same "feel" as direct face-to-face conversation and discussion. Sometimes you weren't sure which person was talking unless they had a distinguishing voice, but nevertheless it got the job done.

The operative words in any management review though, are "active participation". Without that, you cannot possibly show that 1) the required inputs were covered, 2) that actions and decisions were generated from those reviews, and 3) that records of both will be made. A management review that doesn't do one or more of these things is probably not going to be effective, since management reviews are strategic in nature and will open management's eyes to additional ways of improving things that were not as obvious before the review.

But there are different ways to do this, through meetings (most common method), video or phone conferencing, office chats, etc. or whatever your imagination can dream up. However, it must allow for "active participation" in the 3 ways I mentioned above, or you will miss opportunities for improvement in a lot of places. It doesn't have to be a written procedure according to ISO 9001, but I don't see why it couldn't be standardized as one.

Ha, I just saw that Andy beat me to the punch with the "active participation" tagline, but that really is the main purpose of any management review. It is a collaboration tool, which is also a drunk way of saying "calibration tool". :lmao:

Brian :rolleyes:
 
Q

qltyscope1

Nicely stated. Please elaborate on the "active participation" statement. I'm very impressed with the depth of your responses. In the end it appears my management team would have to be convinced that there are no shortcuts that could substitute a good Mreview?
 

AndyN

Moved On
You indicate you have a large management team, which maybe, but how many are actual process owners? Maybe that's the key issue here, is too many people instead of "key" people.

Please tell us more about the "conduct" of the review. When management says it takes "too long" they see no value. I've organized management reviews and they GM of the company said it was the best meeting they'd ever been to...
 
Q

qltyscope1

I'd like to read your definition of key people? and method used to organize the MReviews in order to gain GM approval as "best meeting they ever attended..." really impressive, please elaborate a bit further.

Thanks
 
I

IRAHAZ

My two cents;

have you input and output data summarized with comments and actions to be taken from the relevant department -> compile all of them and submit to the top management (CEO) for his/her review and if there are any comments or action required specified from the CEO, have them minuted and diseminated to relevant department for follow up. Then all the action items can be summarized and resubmitted again to the CEO. Repeat this until all items are covered, addressed and acheived the desired results; let say within 30 days.

It is either you spend the time for the actual review meeting or spend probably the equal amount of time to pass up and down for individual review, follow up and action.:)
 

Big Jim

Admin
A method I have seen is based on the Japanese concept of Ringi.

The basic concept is that a proposal is made by one of the management team and passed on to another member of the team, who reviews it, enters his comments and passes it on to the next, and so on. The document is passed around the team as many times as needed until there is consensus, for or against the proposal and any modifications that may have developed along the way. One of the positive features of this technique is that implementation of the topic reviewed is instantaneous.

The application of the general concept for management review is based on what you noticed earlier, that the standard does not require a meeting.

The management representative prepares an outline, much like he does now to prepare an agenda. The outline includes all of the metrics and how they are tracking as well as what he knows about each of the required topics in element 5.6. Then it is passed around the group for their comments. In today's world, it can be sent to all members of the management team all at once using email.

It is my belief that the most effective management reviews are divided into two main parts, "where are we", and "where to we want to go". Elements 5.6.1 and 5.6.2 provide the "where are we" beginning of the discussion. This is all about the group having their awareness raised as a group. Those with more insight on a topic weigh in and provide their additional knowledge to raise the groups knowledge and so on. Once you go through the list and those with information to share have imparted their knowledge, you can move on to the "where do we want to go from here" which is covered by element 5.6.3. There are three topics to cover here: improvements to the quality management system, improvements to your product, and what are the resource needs to accomplish them.

Although it is my belief that all this is more efficient in a meeting context, but there is nothing to keep from doing this without a meeting, somewhat like Ringi, as long as all the players are committed to making it work. Don't expect it to save time compared to holding a meeting. It may mean that the players can determine when they review the work, but they can't table it or the whole thing just won't work.

It worked quite well for the client that uses it. As with many things, YMMV.
 
Q

qltyscope1

Quality Pros, truly good feedback, your replies are very much appreciated. It's obvious that there are alternatives methods to hold management reviews. However, it's also evident that these alternative methods might even require more time to accomplish a management review.
I personally prefer a once or twice a year planned management review meeting where partners duly prepare their metrics and data as input to evaluate current and future action items among the team.

I'll inform my team about the results and recommend to have planned meetings in a meeting room.
 
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