What is the Difference between Management Review and Internal Audit?

[issmart]

What is the difference between management review and internal audit?
What is the involvement of people in these two? do they involve all the people? What is the contents of these two(items to be assessed)? Which of these two come first?

[antoine.dias]

I think the ISO 9001 standard is rather clear in this.
During internal audits the - qualified - internal auditors must be looking if all processes, identified by the company, are fulfilling the requirements of the standard and the company's own requirements.

As the results of internal audits have to be used as one of the inputs to management review, the audits have to come first.

Management review however is a review by top management on how well the quality management system works and if it has the desired results against the objectives.

A lot more can be said about this, but those are the main items.

Best regards,

Antoine

[Randy]

They are clearly defined in ISO 9001 and the guidance in ISO 9004.

[Wes Bucey]

Originally Posted by issmart

What is the difference between management review and internal audit?
What is the involvement of people in these two? do they involve all the people? What is the contents of these two(items to be assessed)? Which of these two come first?

Welcome to the Cove!

Think of it like a big city newspaper. The reporters are the auditors and the editors are the managers. The reporters go out and gather information. Some have fixed beats: local politics, police blotter, health care, human interest, etc. and some are free lance who pick up stories wherever they can.

The reporters turn in their stories to the editors who make management decisions whether to ignore the story, run it as is, or assign additional reporters to a big, breaking story.

Similarly management review takes the reports of auditors and free lancers (suggestion box?) and decides whether to leave the processes in place, make minor adjustments, or make a major change. The audit committee gathers info, the management committee decides what to do with the info.

[Paul Simpson]

Originally Posted by Wes Bucey

Welcome to the Cove!

Think of it like a big city newspaper. The reporters are the auditors and the editors are the managers. The reporters go out and gather information. Some have fixed beats: local politics, police blotter, health care, human interest, etc. and some are free lance who pick up stories wherever they can.

If the auditors are the reporters then surely the city / country is the organization. All reporters do is produce (make up?) stories. In an organisation most auditors are part time and have a "proper job." Similarly the equivalent of the organisation managers would be the newspaper owners as the editors are in the thick of "production"

Originally Posted by Wes Bucey

The reporters turn in their stories to the editors who make management decisions whether to ignore the story, run it as is, or assign additional reporters to a big, breaking story.

Similarly management review takes the reports of auditors and free lancers (suggestion box?) and decides whether to leave the processes in place, make minor adjustments, or make a major change. The audit committee gathers info, the management committee decides what to do with the info.

Can't quite get this analogy. The management review is a periodic overview to see the processes are working by looking at the process measures - for a newspaper in the UK it might be press complaints referrals. Another measure as to how well the editorial process is working would be how is the circulation doing in relation to the competitors.

My preference for describing a management review is that it is a chance to get the senior managers together once a year to talk about how well the quality system meets their needs.

• Are all the process measures running the right way(the measures they should have had input in developing objectives and targets for)
• Are the customers satisfied
• How must the system develop to meet market needs in the foreseeable future
• Do they as managers need to provide any resources to meet the expected needs
• Are we taking action to address internal and external corrective actions
• Preventive actions are they in place
• Is our own internal review of processes (the audit) telling us we are doing the things we say we want to do

I have deliberately left audits to the end as they are only one component of the review - an important one - but if you are going to get top management commitment to the management system (another thread I see) then you have to emphasize the opportunities a quality management system presents for them in terms of improvement, process control and efficiency.