Unlike many other requirements in ISO 9001, the subclause dealing with the ISO management representative is rarely the subject of debate. In fact, it doesn’t get nearly as much consideration as it deserves.

Traditionally, it’s assumed that the quality manager gets the job by default. If the organization doesn’t have a quality manager, then it falls to the manager of quality control or someone else whose title has something to do with quality. The word “quality” appears to be the deciding modifier. The whole “management” concept doesn’t get even a perfunctory nod.

ISO 9001 doesn’t specify what department or function the representative should come from. It does, however, clearly state that the individual shall be “… a member of management …”

This isn’t only a semantical discourse. It gets to the heart of management’s effective, dynamic involvement in the quality management system. It determines whether the ISO registration is just a wall hanging or a living commitment to customer satisfaction and organizational sustainability. It decreases the likelihood that management review will sound like a postmortem and augments the possibility of dialog wherein fulfillment of the requirements of ISO 9001 relates directly to substantiated decision-making, improvement, mitigation of risk, and innovation.

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