5.3 Organizational Roles, Responsibilities, and Authorities

5.3 Organizational Roles, Responsibilities, and Authorities
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In this section of the ISO 9001/AS9100/AS9120 standard, top management is required to ensure that the responsibilities and authorities are delegated, communicated and recognized within the company for the relevant functions. It should be noted that there is no clear mention in this section of the standard that responsibilities and authorities need to be documented. The completion of this requirement can be verified using pre-existing documents such as procedures, work instructions, or job descriptions, that reflect responsibilities and authorities.

Required Responsibilities and Authorities

As stated in section 5.3 of the standard, top requirement shall assign the responsibility and authority for:

      • Ensuring that the quality management system conforms to the requirements of the International Standard. While all members of the organization contribute to this goal, there shall be an individual who oversees and is responsible for it. Requirement for having a Management Representative is no longer part of the ISO 9001 standard, however, AS standards continue to have this as a requirement. This responsibility typically belongs to a quality manager, quality engineer, director of quality etc. However, any individual with a proper understanding of the ISO 9001/AS9120/AS9100 standard can be qualified to fill this role. There are a number of ways top management can successfully satisfy this requirement. Using the standard as a foundation for establishing the quality management system (QMS) is one way. Conducting internal audits is another great way to assess the overall performance and effectiveness of the QMS in the context of the ISO 9001/AS9120/AS9100 standard. Additionally, top management should provide training on the application of the standard to keep the organization as a whole informed on how the QMS should operate.
      • Ensuring that the processes are delivering their intended outputs. Before observing the outputs, it is important to first define the processes. Once the processes have been defined, objectives and performance indicators can be established for each process to evaluate intended results.
      • Reporting on the performance of the quality management system and on opportunities for improvement. This is another role that relies heavily on reporting and analyzing data. The person or team assigned this responsibility should be able to translate raw data into information in a meaningful way. The data should be collected, analyzed and utilized as opportunities for improvement to present to top management.
      • Ensuring the promotion of customer focus throughout the organization. While customers should always be a top priority, organizations sometimes forget their significance as they grow. The purpose of this role is to maintain customer focus and there are a few ways to do so. The person assigned to this responsibility should ensure that customer feedback is not only collected but analyzed and communicated to the rest of the organization. The organization should then act on this feedback and facilitate processes for improvement in the areas that are affected.
      • Ensuring that the integrity of the QMS is maintained when changes to the QMS are planned and implemented. Most of the aforementioned roles involve a lot of reporting and data analytics to produce and implement positive changes in the QMS. However, it is important to assign someone the role of ensuring that these changes do not compromise the integrity of the QMS. While making all of these tweaks and changes to the QMS, the people assigned to this role should be ensuring that either new documents are created or existing documents are revised to include the new changes. Additionally, the implementation of new processes should be followed by proper training for all relevant personnel.