Management Review - Alternative methods

[AndyN]

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.

You may wish to consider that setting 2 meetings may not be sufficient to accomplish what you want to do. Businesses are fairly dynamic. Unless you allow for additional reviews, you may find that 6 months is too long to go without a review. Don't overlook that this is about reviewing product and process performance, customers' satisfaction and improvements. You may be waiting a long time if something significant happens, just AFTER you held a review...waiting 5+ months to review again, is a looooong time in the business world.

 

[qltyscope1]

AndyN,

Excellent advice. The op team will input your OFI to the meeting agenda in order to make a decision on planned meeting intervals.

 

[kzachawk]

Remember the ISO MSS states you must have management review, it does not state how you must conduct that review. If you staff is already having meetings and covering part or all of the topic requirements of your prescribed ISO MSS's then your good to go, just remember to verify the meetings are documented and that management follows through on the actions determined

 

[Big Jim]

Remember the ISO MSS states you must have management review, it does not state how you must conduct that review. If you staff is already having meetings and covering part or all of the topic requirements of your prescribed ISO MSS's then your good to go, just remember to verify the meetings are documented and that management follows through on the actions determined

I would agree with all but where you say part is already covered in other meetings. It needs to be all of what is required in 5.6, not part.

 

[Tyler C]

You may wish to consider that setting 2 meetings may not be sufficient to accomplish what you want to do. Businesses are fairly dynamic. Unless you allow for additional reviews, you may find that 6 months is too long to go without a review. Don't overlook that this is about reviewing product and process performance, customers' satisfaction and improvements. You may be waiting a long time if something significant happens, just AFTER you held a review...waiting 5+ months to review again, is a looooong time in the business world.

Great advice. We are currently in the process of becoming certified, so I'm not sure if this process will work yet, but this is the direction we are headed.

We must have at least 2 MR meetings a year. Our auditor told us that it is NOT acceptable to only discuss 1/2 of the items listed in the standard, then the other half in the next meeting. We must discuss all inputs every meeting.

In our case, this would be a very long meeting. So, what we are going to try, is to have 2 MR meetings a year. But we will also have "follow up" meetings (basically MR meetings without the title). How this will work, during the MR meeting, we will have quick, simple discussions regarding the inputs. If we decide to spend more time on any given input, it will be during a "follow up" meeting.

I will also be doing a lot of data entry into the KPI's we have, and if anything sets up a red flag that is also an MR input, I can call an impromptu MR meeting to discuss further or set up another "follow up" meeting.

 

[Marcelo]

Understanding that management reviews are the formal tool to verify system effectiveness, If I were the owner of an enterprise I would want to perform one management review each week!

In fact, I've never understood the idea of having time-defined management reviews (besides trying to do it to pass the audit). For me, trigger-based management reviews makes more sense. This requires that you define certain triggers for management reviews (A new regulation? A threshold limit in a process being reached?) and perform them when any the trigger happen - this would also permit that you only treat the related item in that particular management review, not everything. You also would need, for safety, a time-based limit (meaning, if no trigger happened, then you would do it during the year).

 

[Tyler C]

Understanding that management reviews are the formal tool to verify system effectiveness, If I were the owner of an enterprise I would want to perform one management review each week!

In fact, I've never understood the idea of having time-defined management reviews (besides trying to do it to pass the audit). For me, trigger-based management reviews makes more sense. This requires that you define certain triggers for management reviews (A new regulation? A threshold limit in a process being reached?) and perform them when any the trigger happen - this would also permit that you only treat the related item in that particular management review, not everything. You also would need, for safety, a time-based limit (meaning, if no trigger happened, then you would do it during the year).

I like your thinking. Just FYI, this was almost my original direction, but during my pre-assessment a couple of weeks ago, the auditor told me that when we hold an MR meeting, all inputs listed in the standard must be addressed every time.

He said it doesn't explicitly say this, but he has seen numerous NC's written up due to this.

 

[Marcelo]

but during my pre-assessment a couple of weeks ago, the auditor told me that when we hold an MR meeting, all inputs listed in the standard must be addressed every time.

He said it doesn't explicitly say this, but he has seen numerous NC's written up due to this.

I've seem this too in practice, but this is an explicit case of show me the shall. There's never been a requirement that I know that all topics are covered in one review.

 

[Tyler C]

I've seem this too in practice, but this is an explicit case of show me the shall. There's never been a requirement that I know that all topics are covered in one review.

I agree this can be a tricky one, but I don't see how to get around it. For clarification, I'm referring to ISO 9001:2008.

All from 5.6
"Top management SHALL review the organization's quality management system, at planned intervals, to ensure its continuing suitability, adequacy, and effectiveness." - I read this as we have to review the entire QMS at planned intervals. If you plan every three months for example, then every three months you have a Management Review meeting, all three of which must follow this clause.
"This review SHALL include assessing opportunities for improvement and the need for changes to the quality management system, including the quality policy and quality objectives." - I read that all three items listed here must be included in every meeting.
"The input to management review SHALL include information on..." - I read this as whenever a management review meeting is held, these inputs must be included.

Same goes for output. You may be able to argue against it, but I cannot. It's not that all topics are covered in one review, but rather all topics are covered in all reviews.

 

[Marcelo]

"Top management SHALL review the organization's quality management system, at planned intervals, to ensure its continuing suitability, adequacy, and effectiveness." - I read this as we have to review the entire QMS at planned intervals. If you plan every three months for example, then every three months you have a Management Review meeting, all three of which must follow this clause.

If I say that I will review every time a new regulation is published, it's also a planned interval, it only does not define the specific time interval between reviews.

"This review SHALL include assessing opportunities for improvement and the need for changes to the quality management system, including the quality policy and quality objectives." - I read that all three items listed here must be included in every meeting.

Yes, but this is the output. not the input. If there's a new regulation, I will need to define what to do.

"The input to management review SHALL include information on..." - I read this as whenever a management review meeting is held, these inputs must be included.

If I perform part of the management review in one day with X topics, and on another day with y topics, and x + y includes all topics mentioned, I would comply.



The main problem here is that management review has never been defined as one meeting. It's never been defined this way, because the idea is that it's an evaluation (which may include several evaluations).

It's more clear on ISO 9000:

2.8.3 Reviewing the quality management system
One role of top management is to carry out regular systematic evaluations of the suitability, adequacy, effectiveness and efficiency of the quality management system with respect to the quality policy and quality objectives.