ISO 9001 Section 5
Management Responsibility
ISO 9001 Section 5 - Management Responsibility
5.1 Management Commitment
Quality starts at the top rather than the lower levels of a company.
Top management must perform the duties show in clause 5.1.
Top management determines the vision, communicates it to the rest of
the company. They must provide the resources for the system and they are charged with checking up on the vision
from time to time. Top management may be one person in smaller companies or the board of directors or corporate
officers in large companies. For most of use, top management is "The Boss".
5.2 Customer Focus
Customers are the reason the lights are on, the doors are open for
business and the bills get paid. Top management is to focus their attention on making your customers
happy.
5.3 Quality Policy
The company should adopt a policy it can live with and not one that
promises things that are not possible. What is said in the quality policy must be put into play. Everyone in the
company has to know what the policy is and what it means. You don’t need to memorize it word for word. Just have a
good understanding of what it is and what it means.
Top management must also review the policy at each management review to determine if
it needs to be updated.
5.4 Planning
5.4.1 Quality Objectives
The objectives are the things we measure to determine if everything is going okay.
The quality policy doesn’t have to contain the quality objectives, just be the framework for them. The objectives
tell us the goals and purposes of what we are doing.
5.4.2 Quality Management System Planning
We have to plan out what we are going to do before we do it. No shooting from the
hip. We have to make sure we are complying with the items in clause 4.1.
5.5 Responsibility, Authority and
Communication
5.5.1 Responsibility and authority
Have you ever wondered just exactly what your job is? It’s very difficult to do a
great job when no one has told you exactly what it is you’re suppose to do. This clause of the standard requires
that job responsibilities and authorities be written down. The word ‘define’ means write it down.
5.5.2 Management Representative
The company must assign one person to be responsible overall for the QMS. This person may be
called the management representative, quality manager or whatever their regular job title is. You must know who
this person is in your company.
5.5.3 Internal Communications
Top management must make sure that they communicate with everyone in the company
about the ISO 9001 system.
5.6 Management Review
Now that we have defined our quality policy, planned the
implementation of the QMS, identified and defined the responsibilities and authorities to reach our goals, we need
to periodically check and measure our progress and continually improve. This is called management review. Top
management gets together and reviews all the processes to see how they are working.
ISO 9001 Section 4: Quality
Management
ISO 9001 Section 6: Resource
Management
ISO 9001 Section 7: Product
Realization
ISO 9001 Section 8: Measurement,
Analysis and Improvement
Additional Information
Resources
What are Quality Management
Systems?
What is ISO 9000?
What is ISO 9001?
What is ISO 9004?
What is ISO 19011?
ISO 9000-2008 Changes
Online ISO
9000/9001 Overview Course
Auditor Training: Online
Auditor Training
Courseware
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