Using a wiki for document control

[Panchobook]

As mentioned previously, we had a good experience at Geometrica using a wiki for our management system.

Hoping that this experience will help others, we have written a new article on it: Using a Wiki for Document Control. It starts like this:

Change happens and successful organizations embrace it as a spark for improvement. Yesterday’s “way we do things” may be ineffective today, or perhaps even damaging. Work methods must be quickly adapted to condition shifts and knowledge gains. A key component of embracing change is document control, which lies at the heart of any business management system.

Hope y'all will find it useful, and any comments will be appreciated!

Regards,
Pancho

[MeredithMay]

Do you know if wikis might offer the security required for medical devices? ISO 13485 differs from 9001, and the additional FDA/CFR requirements could throw a wrench in the wiki document control.

How do you handle the required approval of documents?

I am glad to see this concept being discussed!

Meredith

[Panchobook]

Hi, Meredith,

Originally Posted by MeredithMay

Do you know if wikis might offer the security required for medical devices? ISO 13485 differs from 9001, and the additional FDA/CFR requirements could throw a wrench in the wiki document control.

I don't but our co-Cover, LeChiffre, has used a wiki for ISO 13485 docs.

How do you handle the required approval of documents?

That's described starting at Control Changes in the article.


Cheers,
Pancho

[ab001]

Originally Posted by Panchobook

As mentioned previously, we had a good experience at Geometrica using a wiki for our management system.

Hoping that this experience will help others, we have written a new article on it: Using a Wiki for Document Control. It starts like this:



Hope y'all will find it useful, and any comments will be appreciated!

Regards,
Pancho

very useful. when i get the time and the strength to take on the "old-school" i really want to try something like this.
i've already done the bug tracker to manage our non-conformances.

i like your point about "content is the key" - that's where the money lies. not in formatting arguments.

[Panchobook]

Originally Posted by ab001

i like your point about "content is the key" - that's where the money lies. not in formatting arguments.

Indeed.

Controlling documents by forcing readers to download uncontrolled pdfs is kinda like bringing cookies to a Weightwatchers meeting.

[ScottK]

Thanks for the article, Pancho.
I'm going to pass this on to my DC guy.
The company is balking on an expensive electronic document management system right now. But we already have the intranet to support a wiki.
This might be a good alternative to a bunch of procedures in a folder on a network drive.

[Panchobook]

There are many wiki engines that are free, and others cost a really small amount. We started with a program for about $150 dollars per year and it is only recently that we have upgraded to one a bit more expensive (the "enterprise" version) because we are now using wiki spaces for many more applications, including project coordination with our clients.

The page that serves the article is a "static view" of our wiki.

[MeredithMay]

I was just speaking with a tech friend of mine about this, and here is some information she gave me:

MLM,
We are looking at purchasing a Wiki to run on our own server vs a "hosted" wiki.

I've been using the WikiMatrix site to look at the possible wiki's we might want. Use the Wiki Choice Wizard to walk you through what you do and do not want/need (EX: Do you want/need Page History?) do you want/need WYSIWYG, what server operating system are you running if you don't want a hosted wiki, etc.

Use the matrix, it's really helpful!

A

P.S. We used PHP Wiki and Twiki (I think, will look) and didn't like these at all. Not sophisticated enough, etc.