Tier Board Review

This record is one step in a larger programme. Using it for work that belongs to a neighbouring template produces records that are hard to report on later.

ISO 9001 cl.9.3 asks organisations to review the management system at planned intervals; a tier board is that review compressed from an annual event into a daily cycle. The clauses below sit at the level this record actually operates at — inputs reviewed, outputs decided, and the corrective action loop that follows.

Tier boards are a management-system practice rather than a statutory one, but three instruments shape how rigorously they're expected to run and what an auditor asks to see.

Filling in each field is mechanical. The judgement calls are what make the record defensible when someone other than the chair reads it later.

Patterns worth watching for once a run of these records exists, not just the day's entry.

A packing line raised a jam-prone infeed guard at three consecutive tier boards. Each time it was written on the whiteboard as an action, and each time the board was wiped at the end of the week before anyone transcribed it into the action log. The chair rotated between two supervisors, neither of whom had seen the earlier entries.

It resurfaced a fourth time when a different operator raised it as if new. By then it had cost roughly a shift's worth of downtime across the three intervening weeks — not because the tier board failed to identify the problem, but because nothing about the board's own process survived contact with a marker and a cloth.

The form is the easy part. Keeping the whiteboard's actions alive past Thursday, routing escalations to the tier that can actually act on them, and holding safety and quality reviews to the same standard every day is the work that actually slips.

KnowOps

Holds the tier board register against every site and tier, chases a record that hasn't been completed by the time the next one is due, and keeps the link to the Meeting Action Log current.

KnowSafe

Picks up anything raised under Safety Reviewed First that needed an escalation, so a safety item flagged at the board doesn't wait for someone to notice it's still open.

KnowQuality

Tracks Quality Reviewed alongside the CAPA references this record feeds, so a quality issue raised at tier board and a formal corrective action opened later are visibly the same thread.

Ella

Rolls completion, escalation and Result Band across every site into one view, and holds any write back to the record for your approval before it lands.

Tier board

A physical or visual board used to run a short, standing daily management meeting at a fixed level — line, area, site or executive — against a fixed agenda.

Gemba

The place where the work actually happens, as distinct from the office or meeting room where it's discussed. Not itself a field on this template, but the reason the board sits on the floor rather than in a meeting room.

Layered process audit

A separate check, done by different levels of management on different frequencies, that a small number of critical process steps are being followed as specified — feeds the tier board rather than replacing it.

Escalation

Moving an item this tier cannot resolve — because of authority, resource or cross-functional scope — up to the next tier, with a reference the receiving tier can open.

Management review

The ISO 9001 cl.9.3 requirement to review the management system's suitability, adequacy and effectiveness at planned intervals; a tier board is a continuous, compressed form of this rather than a substitute for it.