Demonstrated commitment and leadership
Top management must take accountability for the effectiveness of the system, integrate its requirements into the business processes —not as a parallel system— and promote the process approach and risk-based thinking across the organization.
Customer focus
It is management's job to ensure customer requirements and applicable legal and regulatory requirements are determined and met, and that the organization keeps its focus on enhancing customer satisfaction, not just meeting the bare minimum.
Quality policy
It must be appropriate to the organization's purpose and context, include a commitment to meet applicable requirements and to continually improve, and be available and communicated to all relevant parties, inside and outside the company.
Roles, responsibilities and authorities
Management assigns and communicates who answers for what: for the conformity of the system, for the performance of each process, and for reporting on how the whole thing works.
What an auditor usually asks for
- Management review minutes that record decisions, not just data
- A quality policy that is signed, communicated and understood by staff (auditors ask about this)
- An up-to-date organization chart or responsibility matrix for the system
- Evidence that management actively participates, not just approves documents
How to cover leadership in Kimobox
- 1Publish the quality policy as a controlled document, with version, approval and a read receipt from staff.
- 2Turn management review into a template with the minimum inputs already pre-loaded: indicators, audits, nonconformities.
- 3Assign owners and authorities for the system directly on each process in the map, not in a separate org chart.
- 4Keep a record of the decisions made at each review, with a date and an owner to carry them out.
Management review stops being a meeting with no minutes: the data is already assembled before anyone sits down.
Where each figure comes from
References to the official text in force. If a standard is revised, this page is updated and the review date says so.
- ISO 9001:2015 — Quality management systems. Requirements ISO · 2015 ed., with Amd 1:2024
- ISO 9000:2015 — Fundamentals and vocabulary ISO · 2015 ed.
- ISO 19011:2018 — Guidelines for auditing management systems ISO · 2018 ed.