Management Review in QS-9000

How do we satisfy the requirement that "all elements of the entire quality system" are reviewed during Management Review? I was told that you may have to present the full text of QS-9000 at the Management Review. THANKS.

Lyndon -
There is no requirement that the full text of QS9000 be presented at a review. The standard says you must review "all elements of the entire quality system". One way to do this would be to review your internal audit program during this "review". This would classify as reviewing the entire system. A lot of companies that I am familiar with approach it this way. Your management rep is also required to report on the quality system to your management for review. If you already have some sort of regular meeting concerning your company's performance, a brief note by the mgmt. rep about the quality system would also work.

[Marc]

In essence, internal audits have to address your tier 2's - upon which your 'quality' systems are based. and the, as Scott said, your review will suffice.

We conduct a management review once every 3 months. Do the management review need to review all the elements of the entire quality system everytime?

[Marc]

Nope. Not everything every time.

In the QS9000 requirement for management review, the keywords are "continuing suitability" and "effective". How have you defined/proven those characteristics of your quality system?

thanks

Paul

Audit summaries, customer complaints, and corrective actions reviewed at management meetings gives our plant staff a good cross-section of how effective our quality system is doing. When non-conformances generated from these 3 system illustrate that we have a "problem" are it is a good indicator that we have a system(s) that is ineffective. In addition, machine yields, downtime(4.9/PM), scrap(4.13), and Cpk reports (4.9, 4.20) are also reviewed to determine the continuing suitability and effectiveness of our quality system. If any of these areas warrant more attention, the management review session become more frequent.

These are not the only indicators of ineffective systems, for example I had a quality engineer track all the design changes of product that have been approved for production. It seemed that there was an inordinate amount of design changes after the product was approved for production. The numbers were tracked and reported during management review, which indicated that communication between our design group (APQP problem)and process engineers was not as effective as it should be.

[Kevin Mader]

Paul,

Suitability changes as the standard, voluntary or otherwise, changes. QS9000, 3rd edition is different than the 2nd edition. ISO 9000:2000 will be different than ISO 9000:1994. Your program needs to evolve with standard, otherwise your prgram becomes unsuitable. Suitability audits can be compared to desk studies of your Quality Program (your documents) where it is compared to the standards requirements. Suitability is also defined by you. You need to at a minimum satisfy the requirements of the standard, but many Quality Systems go beyond the standard requirements. For those items, you have to review and determine if these things are still practical for your organization. Are they value added operations, or once were and now are waste? You management group decides that.

Christian has given some good examples of measuring system effectiveness. You may want to ask senior management about other measures that they may like to see. This creates better buy in at these meetings. Other results of system effectiveness comes from Internal Quality Audits, where 'compliance' to your Quality Program is reviewed. Compliance audits determine how well you stick to the program. Another good point brought up by Christian is 'system ineffectiveness'. These are generally measures of nonconformance, the problems, where action plans or action plan committees can be determined during management review. I personally like to keep a balance (not necessarily 50/50) of problems and successes. If you heavily skew the mix of the meeting to either side, you end up having a Pep Rally or a Gripe Session (neither are really productive).

Regards, Kevin

Back to the group...

[This message has been edited by Kevin Mader (edited 03-03-99).]