A management review is a key element of how the top management of an organization can assess its performance in terms of the objectives it sets itself, the requirements set by the standard and how its systems are operating. Normally, a management review is a regular meeting of the top management team and uses the information that the organization's systems have derived. It is a useful forum for review and revise quality objectives.
Internal audit is one of the key monitoring processes required by the standard and functions as a check on the organization's systems. It is the opportunity for an organization to determine compliance to the systems it has established and maintained to meet the needs of it's customers and identify opportunities for improvement. Internal audit can be seen as a 'health check' for an organization.
All of the clauses in ISO 9001:2000 are in some way focused towards meeting and exceeding the customer's expectations. For example the requirement of management to determine and communicate the importance of customer requirements throughout the organization, and the review of customer orders to ensure that they can be met. Companies are required to implement methods for effective communication with the client at all stages of the business including ascertaining customer satisfaction after the product or service has been delivered as well as resolving customer complaints.
ISO 9001:2000 is widely acclaimed as being the pre-eminent specification for quality management systems, it requires a company to look at itself and ask the question, 'how can we improve?' An ISO 9001:2000 management system should be an essential part of any business process, requiring continual improvement by self-evaluation with a goal of ensuring that current and future customer expectation can be met and exceeded.
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