Management review is top management’s formal evaluation of whether the management system remains suitable, adequate, effective and aligned with the organisation’s direction. In ISO 9001 it is clause 9.3.
Required inputs
The standard is unusually specific. The review must consider: the status of actions from previous reviews; changes in external and internal issues; customer satisfaction and feedback from interested parties; the extent to which quality objectives have been met; process performance and product conformity; nonconformities and corrective actions; monitoring and measurement results; audit results; supplier performance; adequacy of resources; effectiveness of actions taken to address risks and opportunities; and opportunities for improvement.
Outputs must cover improvement opportunities, any need for changes to the system, and resource needs.
Where it goes wrong
It is delegated. The clause says top management. A review run by the quality manager with no senior attendance is a nonconformity, however thorough the content.
It becomes a slide deck. A presentation of metrics with no decisions recorded misses the point — the required outputs are decisions and actions, not information.
It happens once, right before the audit. “Planned intervals” does not have to mean annually, and for most organisations annually is too infrequent to be useful.
The version that earns its time
Fold it into a meeting senior people already attend, cover the required inputs as a standing agenda, and record decisions with owners and dates. It stops being a compliance exercise and becomes the meeting where the system actually gets steered.