Documents of External Origin - Approaching & Satisfying this Requirement?

[Andy Bassett]

How exactly are you approaching/satisfying this criteria?

I cannot think of a benefit coming out of this. It certainly is going to be very difficult to justify putting stickers on catalogues etc, and as far as customer drawings go, normally they already contain their company name, and what if they dont? Normally an operator only needs to know where the part fits in the assembly, they do not need to know the origin of the drawing.

Can anybody add anything to this.

Regards



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Andy B

[Jim Biz]

Our Auditor dinged us for not controlling "publically obtained" reference books - defining most everything in any book .."external origon" information Machinst manuals - material purchasing cataloges - text books ... training booklets etc..

We made up a master list of what was here for use - (even suggested I "control" a copy of Jurans Quality Handbook unless I specifically stated it was used for reference information only....

I could never "justify" the value added aspect of the exercise

Regards
Jim

My latest attempt at controlling external documents involves linking up to our company's Intranet, where we have electronic versions of several standards, and more coming. In our industry we've got electronic versions of UL standards, with procedures coming, EUSERC, utility specs, and the NEC is in developments.

I am also looking into linking up our documentation with external websites. For example, until we get the electronic NEC we could go to the NFPA website and reference their catalog for the latest version available.

We've had the electronic versions of outside documents for a couple of years, and haven't gotten dinged. But we haven't even addressed the issue of catalogs from distributors, (we don't have design activities at this facility).

AJP

[David Mullins]

My experience of controlling external documents has been a good one. The main thing is drawing a line in the sand.
Our doc control procedure described how external documents would be controlled, and the master list grew to about 4 pages. (I've included Australian references in here - sorry) It included things like, ISO 9001, Australian Standards on topics like handling customer complaints, noise measurement, safety and performance testing, etc., Approved codes of practice for safety issues, accountancy codes of practice, Legislation (Acts and Regulations) on various aspects that applied to our business.

One particularly interesting group of documents were those that applied to the people supplying the product of the organisation. Each employee used several reference manuals to do their job, the problem was that these were issued by the educating institution when they first did their training, consequently there were lots of different versions. By listing all the holders of each of the documents, and determining the latest edition, and gaining agreement from the educational institution to provide us with update material, we were able to provide all staff with the latest external reference manuals, and then train them to keep them up to date.

This might seem like a lot of work, but we are talking about paramedics. Would you like to be a patient and the paramedics argue over clinical practice as they each learnt from a different book, meanwhile you clutch your chest struggling to breath??????

It was worthwhile it for us, and our customers!!!

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[Tom Goetzinger]

I think that is the heart of the matter; what is important to the successful production of your product or service. In the case of the paramedics, makes lots of sense. In the case of most manufacturing companies, the controlling of external catalogs and reference books seems a bit extreme, unless of course, you refer to them in your procedures.

I have faced a problem of getting wrong/obsolete model ordered by my purchasing staff. The error occured due to the fact that I asked the model no as seen from manufacturer's catalogue, while our library maintained at Purchase dept.(external catalogue)contained the obsolete version. The review process could not detect this anomaly, since description column contains similarity in features.
I feel it is a good idea to segregate what external documents are to be maintained (not controlled)by whom & use as it will be beneficial.

Ak

[David Mullins]

Tom hit the nail on the head.

If you refer to an external document in your procedures, then it should be a controlled external document.

akshaykm. If you maintain an external document, aren't you in effect attempting to control it? In which case you should be controlling it in a compliant manner.

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[Marc]

I would suggest if you reach a level where you are controlling catalogues, you have gone way, way too far.