ISO 10013, Guidelines for Developing Quality Manuals, gives an example of a documentation structure for ISO 9001 quality management systems. While this document suggests using a three-level structure, most companies implement four-level documentation structures to include records, as required by element 4.2.4 Control of quality records, of the ISO 9001:2000 Standard. A typical four-level documentation structure includes: Quality Manual - level 1 Procedures - level 2 Instructions - level 3 Records - level 4 Interestingly, how are we going to start our quality manual without knowing what standard this manual is for? The quality policy supposes to define it. The policy defines what standard or standards, a company wants to comply with. If you like this idea, your QMS will contain five levels as in the following list: Quality Policy - level 1 Quality Manual - level 2 Procedures - level 3 Instructions - level 4 Records - level 5 Document titles for your ISO 9001 QMS Some companies use very "wordy" titles for their documents. One of companies I worked with named their Procurement procedure as "Standard Operating Procedure for Purchasing and Vendor Control." While extremely descriptive, this title is not efficient. It is common in regulated industries, such as medical device manufacturing and airspace to call 2nd-level documents Standard Operating Procedures or SOP. Do these companies have "Non-standard Operating Procedures", so long these titles differentiate them? Since a short name identifies a document, I really cannot justify long-named documents. I preach management system optimization and reduction of waste in all elements of management systems. I invite you too not to make things more difficult than they have to be to deliver the message. Numbering your documents In addition to tiles, document numbering systems very often can be optimized too. No standard requires assigning a document its number. This practice is an industry standard. Similar to part titles that we discussed above, document numbering practices often may be simplified too. Look at the example below: A company had some 130 employees. They had two part number formats: one for procedures, another for drawings. Procedures used XX-XXX number format. Drawings were numbered as XXXXXXX-XXX. One of the drawings had a number 000022-003. Assemblers simplified the system and called it "twenty two." One can certainly use these long-long numbers, but is it practical? So far I did not meet a single company that could justify such an approach. When I audited this client, the organization had less than 250 documents. There were no indications that the company will significantly grow. Therefore, to use document number format allowing hundreds of thousands of numbers could hardly be justified. The most unreadable part numbers I had to deal with was at a mid size company with 13-digit alphanumeric part number format! Try to write those in your audit report! I hope it is clear that only when extensive part numbers are justified, we do not have other options. If you build helicopters or satellites, you, no doubt, will need millions of parts and therefore will need long part numbers. If not, make your life easy and stay away from all those zeros. The most practical system I worked with used a three-digit format for their part numbers. 202, 203, 204, and so on. Worked just fine! So far we explored opportunities for improvements in the area of document titles and numbers. Yet, there is another issue with part numbers. Many companies relate a document number to a document type. For example, 20-xxxx indicates a procedure, 30-xxxx indicates a drawing, POP-xxxx indicates a Production Operating Procedure, etc. My practice with a few QMS that used designation approaches showed that "no designation" systems are more practical. Several QMS that used designation I have worked with have failed. Not long ago, one of my clients mentioned that they ran out of range in their document numbering format. The QMS initially permitted for identifying suppliers through a two-digit extension within the part number. While the company grew, the number of supplier increased beyond expectations and eventually the company needed more than 99 suppliers. This resulted in the document number format not being able to support new needs. An alternative approach to part numbering is a "no designation" system, where parts are given sequential unique numbers within a specified format, regardless of their type, material, application or other attributes. After all, isn't the part title the best designator? Seriously, through my entire professional career, I worked only with one company that did not use even document numbers. Their documents were simply identified by titles and a two-digit revision level, like The Prefect Manual 01.
Please Rate this Article 5 out of 54 out of 53 out of 52 out of 51 out of 5
Not yet Rated
