What defines Top Management after a Merger? Quality Management Review (9.3.1)

[Southern Cross]

The requirement for 9.3.1 is:
Top management shall review the organization's QMS at a planned interval to ensure its continuing
•suitability
•adequacy
•effectiveness and
•alignment with the strategic direction of the organization.

What defines Top management? Through a merger we recently became a global company with HQ in Germany. Under the old management, the review was handled at Regional level, with the Regional leaders present.

With the new management, they seem to be wanting to push things like this down to the local level. Which means that I'll be calling a review with the local managers for other functions, rather than regional. The merged company doesn't seem to want Regional leaders of some functions. For example the position of Regional Quality Manager is now redundant.

Any thought on how this might play out when we go for the upgrade to 2015 certification? Any other thoughts?

** NOTE: We are certified still at a regional level, which I think may be relevant. There are plans to chase down global certification at a future date.

 

[howste]

The requirement for 9.3.1 is:
Top management shall review the organization's QMS at a planned interval to ensure its continuing
•suitability
•adequacy
•effectiveness and
•alignment with the strategic direction of the organization.

What defines Top management? Through a merger we recently became a global company with HQ in Germany. Under the old management, the review was handled at Regional level, with the Regional leaders present.

With the new management, they seem to be wanting to push things like this down to the local level. Which means that I'll be calling a review with the local managers for other functions, rather than regional. The merged company doesn't seem to want Regional leaders of some functions. For example the position of Regional Quality Manager is now redundant.

Any thought on how this might play out when we go for the upgrade to 2015 certification? Any other thoughts?

** NOTE: We are certified still at a regional level, which I think may be relevant. There are plans to chase down global certification at a future date.

Top Management in ISO 9000:2015 is defined as "person or group of people who directs and controls an organization at the highest level."

It comes down to how you define your organization in the scope of your QMS. If you have a multi-site certificate with regional leadership currently, then top management is the regional leadership. If you are going to maintain certification as-is, then the regional leadership being removed would be a problem. You may have to change the certification structure to single site until a global certificate becomes a reality. If you want a global certification including the HQ in Germany, then top management is most likely there. You would need to implement a common QMS that applies globally.