Leadership’s Responsibilities and Commitment

Clause 5.1 addresses the requirements for Leadership and Committment. The following list outlines the key responsibilities that management must carry out during the design and implementation of the system, and during the maintenance and improvement of the system. Remember that you will need to provide evidence to registration auditors to demonstrate your role in fulfilling each of these responsibilities.

During Design and Implementation:

• Establish the quality policy.
• Ensure that quality objectives are established at all relevant levels of the organization.
• Ensure availability of resources.
• Ensure that the planning of the quality system is carried out to meet the requirements of the standard and the quality objectives.
• Ensure that responsibilities, authorities and their interrelation are defined and communicated.
• Ensure that appropriate communication is established within the organization and effectiveness of the quality management system is communicated.

After Registration:

• Maintenance and Continual Improvement
• Communicate the importance of meeting customer, statutory and regulatory requirements.
• Conduct management reviews.
• Ensure availability of resources.
• Ensure that customer requirements are determined and fulfilled.
• Ensure that the integrity of the quality management system is maintained when changes are made.

Summary of management actions and benefits:

1. Define business/quality objectives that are in line with your organization’s quality policy and strategic direction. Communicate these objectives and how they will be achieved throughout your organization.
2. Show that the business is central to the system: use your normal business language, not ‘quality’ or ISO 9001 terms.
3. Produce a simple top-level, “big picture” of your business processes.
4. Demonstrate your commitment to continual improvement.
5. Show that the process approach is becoming instituted by integrating reviews into normal management cycles.
6. Ensure that records are kept during management reviews to capture action items and the topics discussed.

Save time, buy our “Management Responsibility” procedure which outlines the responsibilities of Top Management and describes a process to meet the requirements.

• The procedure lays out a method of identifying quality goals and objectives and
  measuring and monitoring against those goals.
• It also describes an effective management review process.
• Includes useful forms like:
  • F-500-001 QMS Monitoring, Measuring and Analysis Table
  • F-500-002 Key Process Master List
  • F-560-001 Management Review Agenda
  • F-560-002-Management Review Checklist
  • F-824-001 Product Realization Monitoring, Measuring and Analysis Table
  • A-500-001 Quality Policy
• Includes Several Flow Charts:
  • FD-5.0 Management responsibility
  • FD-510 Quality policy, objectives & principles
  • FD-540 QMS planning process
  • FD-545 Quality objectives planning
• This procedure has been used in many successfully registered organizations.
• By starting your system design using this procedure, you will save time and resources that would be spent designing your procedure from scratch. You also benefit from the years of experience that our consultants (Registered Lead Assessors) have and used in designing this procedure.

We offer a complete list of procedures and a quality manual that you can use to design your system. The procedures are in Microsoft Word and are simple to edit. We give technical support all of our customers, answering questions on the standard and on your project by email.