Management Review topics

A "management review" is a periodic evaluation of the management system by top management to assess its effectiveness and identify opportunities for improvement.

The ISO management system standards require certain topics to be covered as 'management review inputs'.

Some topics are common across the different management system standards, while others are specific to each standard, e.g.,

• ISO 9001 quality standard says you must look at customer satisfaction,
• ISO 45001 safety standard requires review of trends in safety incidents,
• ISO 14001 environmental requires review of your environmental aspects,
• and all three standards require review of the relevant internal and external issues that set the context.

If you have an integrated management system for compliance to multiple standards, you can include them all in the one process as long as you ensure all the required topics are covered.

For an ISO 9001 quality management system, here's what you need to cover:

1. Review the quality objectives and assess whether they have been achieved. If not, determine why and plan what corrective actions should be taken.
2. Evaluate the QMS performance - looking at trends in customer satisfaction, process monitoring indicators including measures of product/service conformity, other nonconformance, corrective actions, internal and external audit results.
3. Consider any changes in the organisation's internal or external context that may affect the QMS.
4. Top management should review the status of actions taken from previous management reviews and assess their effectiveness. Any necessary updates to the QMS should be identified, including changes to policies, procedures, or objectives.
5. Review resource needs, including personnel, training, or equipment, to ensure that the QMS is adequately resourced.
6. Consider opportunities for improvement and any potential areas for innovation or cost savings. This could include suggestions from employees, customers, or suppliers or any emerging best practices in the industry.

You will need to keep a record of the management review, and any decisions and actions arising.

One way to achieve this is through a management review meeting and minutes (or spread the topics across multiple meetings). Here's more on management review with a template meeting agenda available.

In Quality Systems Toolbox, you can use a standard meeting agenda as a controlled document, like this one, or build an electronic form to ensure the required topics are covered.