Material Review Board

A Material Review Board (MRB) is the formal, cross-functional decision-making body that reviews nonconforming material and determines what happens to it. When an incoming part, in-process component, or finished good fails inspection or deviates from its drawing, specification, or acceptance criteria, an inspector raises a nonconformance report (NCR) and physically segregates the item, usually to a locked or tagged MRB hold area. The board then convenes to evaluate the defect against engineering intent, customer requirements, and regulatory obligations, and renders a documented disposition. The MRB exists so that off-spec material is never quietly used, scrapped, or shipped on the judgment of a single person; the decision is deliberate, traceable, and owned by the right disciplines.\n\nAn MRB is staffed by subject-matter experts from quality, engineering, and production, and often pulls in supply chain, purchasing, or regulatory affairs depending on the part. Quality owns the process and the record; engineering judges whether the deviation affects form, fit, or function; production weighs schedule and rework feasibility; purchasing handles supplier returns and chargebacks. The standard dispositions are scrap (unusable, destroyed and removed from inventory), rework (corrected to fully meet spec), repair (corrected to a usable but non-standard condition), return to vendor (sent back to the supplier as a rejection), and use-as-is or accept under concession (a minor nonconformity accepted without correction, frequently requiring customer or MRB sign-off and a deviation record).\n\nOn the shop floor the MRB is the control point that keeps suspect material out of the value stream. A disciplined hold-tag-segregate-disposition loop prevents nonconforming parts from being consumed in assembly, depresses scrap rate, and feeds root cause analysis and corrective and preventive action (CAPA) when patterns emerge. The NCR data the board generates is a primary input to supplier scorecards, first-pass-yield tracking, and cost-of-quality reporting.\n\nIn a unified platform the MRB ties directly into the broader manufacturing stack. Inventory and the warehouse system enforce the quarantine status so held lots cannot be picked; the manufacturing execution system (MES) flags the work order and routes the part to an MRB queue; the quality management system (QMS) stores the NCR, disposition, and electronic signatures; and ERP records the financial impact through scrap write-offs, rework labor, or vendor chargebacks. For regulated manufacturers, this traceability is not optional. FDA 21 CFR Part 820 and ISO 9001 both require documented control of nonconforming product, and the MRB record is the auditable evidence that every deviation was reviewed and resolved by an accountable team.