A material review board (MRB) is a cross-functional group that decides what to do with nonconforming material: use it as is, rework it, repair it, scrap it, or return it to the supplier. It reviews parts that failed inspection or deviate from spec, agrees a disposition, and documents the decision and its justification.
When a part fails inspection, someone has to decide its fate, and that decision often has real cost and risk attached. Scrap a good batch and you burn money; ship a marginal one and you risk a customer escape. The MRB exists so that call is made deliberately, by the right people, with the reasoning on record, instead of quietly by whoever is under the most schedule pressure that day.
What is a material review board?
A material review board is a body responsible for evaluating nonconforming material and determining its final disposition. The material comes to it through the nonconformance process: something failed incoming inspection, in-process checks, or final inspection, or was flagged during an internal audit or otherwise fell outside spec, and cannot simply be accepted or scrapped without judgment.
The MRB is the decision step in your control of nonconforming product, which ISO 9001:2015 requires under Clause 8.7 (ISO 9001:2015). The chain is straightforward: a nonconformance is found and the material is quarantined; a nonconformance report documents it; the MRB reviews and dispositions it; and the disposition is carried out and recorded. If the nonconformance is likely to recur, it also feeds corrective action so the same problem does not keep landing on the MRB's table.
Who sits on a material review board?
An MRB is cross-functional by design, because a good disposition needs several viewpoints at once. Quality assurance almost always owns and runs the process: scheduling reviews, keeping the NCR log, ensuring documentation is complete, and confirming each decision meets the applicable requirements. Around QA sit the functions that can judge feasibility and consequence:
- Engineering (design or manufacturing) to judge whether the nonconformance affects form, fit, function, or safety, and whether rework or repair is technically sound.
- Production or manufacturing to speak to rework feasibility, capacity, and schedule impact.
- Purchasing or supplier quality when the material came from a supplier to handle return, chargeback, and corrective action with the source.
- The customer, sometimes, because using nonconforming product as is, or repairing it, frequently requires customer concession or waiver, especially in aerospace, automotive, and medical.
The membership scales with the stakes. A minor cosmetic deviation might be dispositioned by QA and engineering in minutes. A safety-relevant nonconformance on a customer's critical part pulls in the full board and the customer before anything moves.
The reason for the crowd is that no single function can see the whole picture. Engineering might judge a deviation harmless while purchasing knows the supplier has done it three times this quarter, which turns a quiet use-as-is into a return and a chargeback. Production might love a quick repair that engineering knows compromises fatigue life. The board exists precisely to force those views into the same room so the decision reflects cost, risk, and feasibility together, not just whichever function shouted loudest.
What are the MRB dispositions?
There are five common dispositions, and picking the right one is the board's core job. Each has a clear definition and a matching record requirement:
| Disposition | What it means | When to use it |
|---|---|---|
| Use as is | Accept the material despite the deviation | Deviation has no or low effect on quality, fit, or function; often needs a waiver or customer concession |
| Rework | Bring the material fully back into spec | The nonconformance can be corrected so the part meets all original requirements |
| Repair | Make it acceptable without full conformance | Part can be made usable but not fully to spec; usually needs engineering and customer approval |
| Return to supplier | Send it back to the source | Defect affects form, fit, or function and the supplier owns the fix, chargeback, or replacement |
| Scrap | Discard as unusable | Cannot be corrected economically or safely; the safest call when in doubt |
Two distinctions matter. First, rework restores full conformance, while repair only restores acceptability, which is why repair almost always needs documented engineering and customer sign-off. Second, "use as is" is not "ignore it": it is a deliberate acceptance of a known deviation, recorded as a concession or waiver, so the deviation is traceable if it ever matters later. Some organizations add sort or regrade as additional options, but the five above cover the vast majority of decisions.
The order of preference usually runs from cheapest-and-safest to most-wasteful. If the part can be reworked fully back to spec, that is normally the best outcome: no waiver, no residual risk, no scrap cost. Return to supplier shifts the cost to whoever caused the defect and is standard for purchased material. Use as is and repair both accept a lasting deviation, so they carry the most documentation and approval burden. Scrap is the total loss, but it is also the right answer whenever safety or conformance is genuinely in doubt, and a mature MRB never lets schedule pressure talk it out of scrapping material that should be scrapped.
How does an MRB decision get documented?
The disposition is only as good as its record. Each MRB decision should capture the nonconformance and its evidence, the disposition chosen, the technical justification, any approvals required (engineering, customer), who decided, and the date. That record links back to the originating NCR and forward to whatever happens next: the rework instruction, the scrap ticket, the supplier return, the customer concession.
Good MRB records do double duty. They prove control of nonconforming product for an audit, and they become data. Roll up disposition records over time and patterns appear: which parts, which suppliers, which defects, which lines keep generating nonconformances. That is the bridge from firefighting individual parts to tracking defects systemically and driving the worst offenders into corrective action.
A missing or vague MRB record is a favorite audit finding, because it usually means either the disposition was made without authority or the accepted deviation cannot be traced. If a customer later asks whether a specific lot was shipped with a known deviation, the concession record is the only thing that answers cleanly. Treat the record as the deliverable of the MRB, not an afterthought to it.
How to run a material review in 7 steps
A repeatable MRB process looks like this:
- Identify and quarantine. When material is found nonconforming, physically segregate it and mark it clearly so it cannot be used by mistake while its fate is decided.
- Document the nonconformance. Raise an NCR capturing what is wrong, how much, where it came from, and the objective evidence, before opinions start flying.
- Assemble the right board. Pull in QA plus the functions the decision needs: engineering, production, purchasing, and the customer when a concession or repair is likely.
- Evaluate the nonconformance. Judge the effect on form, fit, function, and safety, and the technical feasibility of rework or repair. This is where engineering earns its seat.
- Decide the disposition. Choose use as is, rework, repair, return, or scrap, with the reasoning explicit. When in doubt on safety, the conservative call wins.
- Record and get approvals. Document the decision, justification, and required sign-offs, including customer concession or waiver where the disposition demands it.
- Execute and, if recurring, escalate. Carry out the disposition, verify it was done, close the record, and route recurring or high-cost nonconformances into corrective action so the root cause gets killed.
MRB facts worth anchoring on
Reference points from the standards bodies:
- Control of nonconforming outputs is required by ISO 9001:2015 Clause 8.7, which requires you to identify and control nonconforming product to prevent unintended use and to keep records of the nonconformity and the disposition (ISO 9001:2015).
- The common MRB dispositions are use as is (accept), rework, repair, return to supplier, and scrap, with concessions and waivers recorded for accepted deviations (ASQ quality glossary).
- In automotive, control of nonconforming product and its disposition is reinforced by IATF 16949 which adds customer-authorization requirements before use-as-is or repair dispositions.
The friction in most MRBs is not the decision, it is the paperwork and the follow-through: quarantined material waiting on a board that meets slowly, NCRs and dispositions scattered across email and spreadsheets, and no easy way to see which supplier or part keeps showing up. Harmony's part is narrow: capture nonconformances and MRB dispositions digitally where they happen, keep them searchable and linked, and surface the repeat offenders, so the board spends its time judging instead of hunting records, and recurring problems reach corrective action before they cost more, working alongside your existing systems rather than replacing them. No rip-and-replace, and cleaner records feed straight into a lower cost of quality. You can see the digitization approach in a real plant on our customer story. However you run it, the MRB's job never changes: decide the fate of nonconforming material deliberately, and leave a record of why.