Have You Conducted the Annual Management Review for Your Organization?

Management Responsibility

If implementation of review outcomes is very critical to be implemented in order to resolve quality issues or affect the quality management system significantly at shorter intervals, then it makes business sense to hold review meetings monthly or at most quarterly. Hence Management review shall be planned and carried out, taking into account the changing business environment and in alignment with the strategic direction of the organization according to ISO 9001:2015.

Some businesses depend on annual management reviews but the disadvantage is that, there could be issues that should have been resolved far earlier regarding the sustenance of the business when it came to quality. If the same attention given to the tracking of sales, cash flow, operating margins and the other financial indicators would be given to quality, businesses would be much healthier in totality.

To this end therefore, businesses are encouraged to begin quality management reviews at the start of the year and maintain a consistent interval in such reviews to ensure their businesses thrive. The other challenge has gotten to do with the caliber of people that participate in management reviews. Again, there are several instances where quality reviews are relegated to line managers whilst senior management excuse themselves to “strategic planning”.

It is not for nothing that the ISO Standard recommends management review to comprise of top management, a quality management representative who chairs the meeting, line managers and compliance managers. It is also important to invite any other person who may give quality input into the review.

The importance top management gives to quality and related issues in a business determines how far the company will thrive. Short term goals of seeing profits go up may give a company a lifeline for a few years, but a long-term plan that embraces the right management of quality gives a business oxygen for life.

Management Review Inputs

These activities include formulating a quality policy and setting quality objectives. They also include quality planning, quality control, quality assurance, and quality improvement. The inputs to the management review will therefore encompass all the elements of the definition above.

The first input will consider the status of actions from previous management reviews. This follows a typical review of actions in meetings. It is not prudent to keep adding actions at meetings without first considering previous actions and the status of those actions.

Accountability is key to improvement. We laud achievements but sound reason should form the basis why we miss targets. Another input to management review is changes in external and internal issues that are relevant to the quality management system. In the course of the year, certain changes such as reviews in formulation, processes, external supply chain, regulatory issues and a lot more may emerge.

These internal and external issues may have a direct impact on the quality management system such that, things should be done differently to accommodate them. The overall impact on quality of products and services should be positive and ultimately satisfy customer requirements.

The third input to management review is information on the performance of the quality management system, including trends and indicators for: Nonconformities and corrective actions; Monitoring and measurement of results; Audit results, Customer feedback; Supplier and external provider issues; and Process performance and product conformity.

All these pieces of information come as a result of active participation of individuals within the organization because these are mainly driven by records, trends and trend analysis and a cycle of activities geared towards closing the loop on nonconformities. Activities such as process audits, hygiene audits, supplier audits, consumer/customer complaints monitoring, just to mention a few are so crucial to bringing to the fore how well or otherwise an organization is performing with respect to quality management.

The last input to management review is opportunities for continual improvement. This is usually ascertained from the overall performance of the system; what went well and could be improved and what didn’t go well and must be worked on. 

Management Review Outputs

The successes chalked from resolving nonconformities must be sustained. There are instances where the process of resolving consumer complaints bring in its wake brilliant ideas of improving a product. In the end, the initial defect resulting in the complaint is resolved in addition to an improvement that gives the product or service a better functional outlook. Another output of such review is the opportunity to make changes to the quality management system. Such changes are due to the overall effect of the inputs to the management review.

Conclusion

In an article titled ‘How Jack Welch Runs GE’, I could understand how it was possible for Jack to make GE so powerful with the Six Sigma programme. He understood how a quality programme could help him turn his business around. Every organization has the capacity to see a turnaround when focus on quality programmes become paramount.

Johnson Opoku-Boateng is the Chief Executive & Lead Consultant, QA CONSULT (Consultants and Trainers in Quality Assurance, Health & Safety, Environmental Management systems, Manufacturing Excellence and Food Safety). He is also a consumer safety advocate and helps businesses with regulatory affairs. He can be reached on +233209996002, email: johnson@qaconsultgh.com.