Management Representative for ISO 9001 - Responsibilities

This article applies to a previous version of the ISO 9001 standard that has been superseded.

ISO 9001 quality management standard requires you to designate a “Management Representative”.

The standard is pretty clear about who this should be – someone from management! (and not the receptionist or bookkeeper (!!) as we occasionally see.)

While often a part of the role, being the contact person for the auditor is not the primary function.

Management Representative is really a cross-functional role involving project management, administrative, and business development tasks.

The ISO 9001:2008 standard allocates three duties:

• ensure Quality Management System processes are “established, implemented and maintained”,
• report to “top management” on the QMS performance and where improvements are needed,
• ensure that everyone in the organisation is aware of customer requirements.

The Management Representative is the key co-ordinator for the development of the quality system and, once the system has been certified, assumes responsibility for on-going system maintenance and effectiveness of operation. Rather than developing the QMS themselves, the management representative acts as a project manager for the ISO 9001 certification ‘project’.

Ongoing duties include reporting on how well the QMS is working and where it is not. The kinds of information to be reported will include things listed under Management Review (e.g. audit findings, customer feedback, suppliers, data establishing process trends = ‘KPI’s). The actual data collection and analysis may well be done by someone else, e.g. the process owner.

The third duty is about making sure that the focus of the organisation remains on the customer. This can mean training, induction for new hires, updating policies, sharing customer feedback, etc… Note that this does not mean the Management Rep must DO all these things – they just have to make sure that it is happening.

These three duties are likely to be on top of other responsibilities.

The draft of the 2015 version of the ISO 9001 standard completely removes any reference to a “Management Representative”. Instead, some duties are assigned directly to top management and others can be delegated (although Top Management is still held accountable).

There’s no change to the requirement to establish “authority and responsibility”. This is often acheived through responsibility statements within Job Descriptions.

What statements might you see in a job description for a Management Representative? Here are some examples.

• Ensure that company third party accreditations are obtained and maintained (ISO 9001, AS 4801, ISO 14001).
• Ensure all company policies, procedures, and work instructions are documented in a clear, simple and concise manner.
• Assist in the preparation of tenders by providing management system related documents.
• Train all company personnel in the documented company policies
• Identify relevant legislative requirements.
• Control and maintain the company audit and risk assessment schedule.
• Conduct safety, quality and environmental system compliance audits
• Ensure personnel have received appropriate training and are assessed as competent to perform tasks.
• Prepare and submit monthly management reports relating to company systems, compliance and incidents
• Maintain the company library of compliance resources including standards.

Let us know what your responsibilities are. Have you seen any crazy statements? Share over on our Facebook page