ISO 9001:2015 §9.3 — Management review

ISO 9001:2015 clause 9.3 — Management review — is the part of the standard that puts top management on the hook for the QMS. At planned intervals, the people who actually run the business have to sit down, look at a defined list of inputs about how the system is performing, and produce a defined list of outputs — decisions on improvement, on changes to the QMS, and on resources. It is one of the two clauses (alongside 9.2) where auditors expect a paper trail, and where the absence of one is almost always a major finding.

This page summarises what the clause asks for, splits it into 9.3.1, 9.3.2, and 9.3.3, and shows where in Sertiq each input and output is captured.

9.3.1 — General

“Top management shall review the organization’s quality management system, at planned intervals, to ensure its continuing suitability, adequacy, effectiveness and alignment with the strategic direction of the organization.”

Three things matter here:

Top management — the people who set strategy, not the Quality Manager alone. Typically the CEO / MD plus the heads of operations, sales, and finance.
Planned intervals — auditors read this as at least annual, with quarterly or half-yearly cycles preferred in active organisations.
Suitability, adequacy, effectiveness, alignment with strategy — the four lenses the review must apply to the QMS.

In Sertiq this corresponds to the review record itself: a MR-YYYY-NNN row with a chair (top management), a review date, and a defined review period.

9.3.2 — Inputs

The clause names twelve specific inputs the review must consider. Each is captured as its own field on the Sertiq management review.

a) Status of actions from previous management reviews — what was decided last time, and was it done.
b) Changes in external and internal issues relevant to the QMS — new regulations, market shifts, restructures.
c.1) Customer satisfaction and feedback from interested parties.
c.2) Extent to which quality objectives have been met — KPI achievement against targets.
c.3) Process performance and conformity of products and services.
c.4) Nonconformities and corrective actions — NCR / CAPA volumes, trends, overdue items.
c.5) Monitoring and measurement results — inspection data, calibration, control charts.
c.6) Audit results — internal audits (9.2) and external (certification, customer, regulatory).
c.7) Performance of external providers — supplier scorecards, OTD, quality.
d) Adequacy of resources — headcount, skills, equipment, infrastructure.
e) Effectiveness of actions taken to address risks and opportunities.
f) Opportunities for improvement.

9.3.3 — Outputs

The clause names three outputs the review must produce.

a) Decisions and actions related to opportunities for improvement.
b) Decisions and actions related to any need for changes to the QMS.
c) Resource needs.

Each output should ideally cite the input that drove it — auditors check that traceability.

How Sertiq covers each requirement

9.3 requirement	Where it lives in Sertiq
Planned intervals	Every review has a `review_date` and a review period. The list view sorted by date is the calendar of past and upcoming reviews.
Top management chair	The chair field on the review, drawn from the Employees register. Recorded on the PDF.
Attendees	Multi-checkbox of employees on the review. The PDF prints the full attendee list.
9.3.2 a) — previous actions	Dedicated input field on the review.
9.3.2 b) — internal / external issues	Dedicated input field.
9.3.2 c.1–c.7) — performance inputs	Seven dedicated input fields, one per sub-clause.
9.3.2 d) — adequacy of resources	Dedicated input field.
9.3.2 e) — risk / opportunity effectiveness	Dedicated input field.
9.3.2 f) — opportunities for improvement	Dedicated input field.
9.3.3 a) — improvement decisions	Output field a).
9.3.3 b) — QMS changes	Output field b).
9.3.3 c) — resource needs	Output field c).
Documented information retained	The review row plus its fields persist for the life of the organisation; the Download PDF export is the printable evidence.
Evidence files	Attachments stored in R2 (25 MB per file, PDF / image / Office whitelist).

See Management Reviews for the feature documentation.

Common auditor questions and where the answer lives

External auditors ask the same handful of 9.3 questions during stage 2 or surveillance visits. For each:

“Show me your last management review.” — Management Reviews list, most recent completed row. Click MR-YYYY-NNN, Download PDF.
“Who chaired it? Are they top management?” — the chair field on the review and on the PDF meta block. Title comes from the Employees register.
“Who attended?” — Attendees list on the review detail page, printed on the PDF.
“How often do you hold the review?” — list filtered by year, sorted by review_date.
“Show me how you reviewed customer feedback / KPIs / audit results / supplier performance.” — point to the corresponding 9.3.2 input field on the latest review (c.1, c.2, c.6, c.7 respectively). Blank fields render as “Not captured” on the PDF, so they are obvious.
“Show me a KPI miss that drove a corrective action.” — input c.2 or c.4 on the review describes the miss; output a) or b) describes the decision; the NCR / CAPA referenced in the output text closes the loop. Click the NCR number to see the CAPA chain.
“What did top management decide about resources?” — output c) on the latest review.

If the answer to any of those is not one click away, the review programme is weaker than it should be.

Management Reviews — the feature that implements 9.3 end to end.
ISO 9001 §9.2 — sister clause; internal audit results are one of the 9.3.2 inputs.
Internal Audits — feeds clause 9.3.2 c.6.