Our quality manual contains a page that lists the previous revisions to the manual,a summary of the change, a reference to the change order number that contains the exact change in detail and an effective date.

while auditing the manual's changes I discovered that between rev D and E of the manual there was a change that did not get incorporated in the manual revision history!
Technically, this means that any subsequent revisions (3 of them) are actually off by one revision. What do I do to fix this? Do I just make another revision of the manual and include in the revision history page a description of this event? Do I need to go back to all the previous change records for the manual back to the time that this change should have been included in the history page and edit all the manuals? HEEEEEELLLPPP!

Mark:

It all depends on how masochistic you're feeling - you could go back and correct all of the revisions and make all of the corresponding changes - or, just make an entry on the revision history page, note the revision error, and go on with life. Just be sure you can show effective communication of the change, if relevant.

One way of looking at situations such as this is - what is the value added to the process if I do "x" or "y." If no value is added, and the quality of the product or customer satisfaction is not jeopardized, then minimze your efforts and simply note what actions were taken.

Mike is right. Fix it and communicate it (perhaps with the redistribution).

Mistakes will happen. Its a fact of life. The important thing here is that you caught it, evaluated all risk encountered, and corrected the issue.

Regards,

Kevin