Question: We are in the process of changing our company name. We have issued and documented a memoradium stating that we endorse and accept the existing QA program, until such time, that we complete a revision and update of the manual to include the new company name, processes and forms/records. What would be an appropriate time frame be to revise and change the QA Manual over to the new company name. We were thinking 6 months as long as we documented management direction and acceptance. This new QA Manual and related processes will be submitted during our annual certification audit review.

Question: We are in the process of changing our company name. We have issued and documented a memoradium stating that we endorse and accept the existing QA program, until such time, that we complete a revision and update of the manual to include the new company name, processes and forms/records. What would be an appropriate time frame be to revise and change the QA Manual over to the new company name. We were thinking 6 months as long as we documented management direction and acceptance. This new QA Manual and related processes will be submitted during our annual certification audit review.One "cheap trick" which works for me is just to create a new coversheet and accompanying "adoption certificate" and put it on the "old" Qmanual. Perhaps you might put in a phrase which says something to the effect, "Where the term 'ABC Company' (our previous corporate name) appears, it should be interpreted to be 'XYZ Company' (our new corporate name.)"

Do you intend to change anything "material" in the processes or procedures or is everything just being revised to include new company name, logos?

Is the corporation changing ownership, adding/dropping locations, adding/dropping products? If not, this is no big deal. If yes, consult your Registrar before proceeding - it may have some pertinent suggestions to reduce your costs.

Changing the company name on documents should not be a problem considering they are on the hard drive. Maybe some additional information as to why it would take 6 months to make the change.

Al...

The company I am currently with has changed names 4 times in the last 4 years. To facilitate these changes, as Wes said, I have created a new cover page for the QM (as well as the FAA Repair Station Manual), and I also revised the Company Profile to include all past dba's-which I leave in even after the revision. In the cover page I state that documentation with XXX company name/logo/header, will be accepted as current YYY company documentation. I also include legal copies of the name change in the FAA and QM and provide them to vendors with the certification packets for vendor audits. This has covered me in the past with the FAA, vendors, and registrars so long as the procedures and processes have remained the same.

When our company changed names (3 times in about 1.5-2 years), we kept updating the Quality Manual - wasn't that big of deal to change that document.

All forms and other documentation, well, different issue. We decided to make it a policy that we would no longer state our company name in documentation...instead we use the word "Company".

Logos were a bit more difficult, so we decided that for all logos and insertion of the word "Company", document revisions would occur when the document came due for review.

Our document control software package ensures that all documents are prompted for review within 364 days of their last approval/review. If a document was not modified within the past year, it was flagged for review and the changes were made at that time. If a document was modified with the past year, well, the changes were made then, too.