Management review is top management evaluating the management system at planned intervals to review its suitability, adequacy and effectiveness.
It is not a reporting meeting but a decision-making mechanism. It is one of the areas most often found weak in audits, because in most organizations inputs are presented but no outputs are produced.
Typical inputs
- Status of decisions from previous reviews
- Changes in the context and in interested party expectations
- Extent to which objectives have been met
- Process performance and conformity data
- Customer feedback and complaints
- Nonconformities and corrective actions
- Internal and external audit results
- Supplier performance
- Adequacy of resources
- Effectiveness of actions taken to address risks and opportunities
- Opportunities for improvement
Expected outputs
Decisions on improvement opportunities, changes to be made to the system and decisions on resource needs. Every decision should be tied to an owner and a date.
A review that ends without decisions does not meet the requirement, even if minutes are kept.
Management review is the closing point of the PDCA cycle and a common clause in all management systems. Setting up the input–output structure is practised in programmes such as the ISO 9001 training or the environmental management system training. All our topics are on the Academy page.