Continuous improvement is the heartbeat of any quality management system and its pace reflects its health status. All efforts dedicated to planning, doing as planned, and checking if envisioned results are being achieved have little value if the lessons learned along the way are not used to improve the processes. Act is the fourth and last phase of the PDCA cycle and can mean two different things, both leading to improvement:

• when, as a result of the check phase, the organization concludes that envisioned results are not being achieved, acting means determining if the causes are inadequate planning or inadequate implementation and apply corrections as needed;
• when, as a result of the check phase, the organization concludes that envisioned results are being achieved – in other words, the process is effective – then acting means implementing changes to the process to make it more efficient – in other words making it capable of achieving the same results with less resources.

Both EQAVET and ISO 21001 put great emphasis on the importance of reviews as a mean to assure quality and its continual improvement, dedicating full sections to review requirements.

The Template for Internal and External Communication is positioned in this cluster but its application is transversal to all clusters, as they all contain requirements for communication, being it internal, external or both.