Trigger Point - Determining When We Can Dispose of Quality Records

[gheghe]

Our procedure said before that customer documents are retained after two years, and be dispose afterwards. I've notice that it failed to indicate the "from when". So what we did was, we added the "from obsolete/inactive date" and we have now a stamp that will tell you when it was obsoleted. My concern now is that we have lots of obsolete documents in our history files that haven't dispose yet because there's no date indicated there. I planned to traceback the current revision date of those documents but there's nothing there but the approval date of the customer, but on when we actually received the document, it was not indicated. What do you suggest to do about those documents which obviously old, ranging from 4 to 10 years old, from customer revision date)?

Thanks again for the support and inputs.

[Mike S.]

Here is what I'd do: If you know the documents are obsolete and you know they are over 2 years old (despite there being no stamped obsolete date) I'd get rid of them -- why keep what you do not need? If you are not sure of the obsolete date, stamp them obsolete as of today and get rid of them in 2 years. Finally, I would say that after 2 years the documents may be destroyed at the discretion of the person in charge of that document. That way if you are busy and don't get the document destroyed after 2 years and 1 week you do not get dinged by an auditor over something minor.

[Wes Bucey]

Originally Posted by Mike S.

Here is what I'd do: If you know the documents are obsolete and you know they are over 2 years old (despite there being no stamped obsolete date) I'd get rid of them -- why keep what you do not need? If you are not sure of the obsolete date, stamp them obsolete as of today and get rid of them in 2 years. Finally, I would say that after 2 years the documents may be destroyed at the discretion of the person in charge of that document. That way if you are busy and don't get the document destroyed after 2 years and 1 week you do not get dinged by an auditor over something minor.

Mike makes some good points here. Let me suggest you also add a clause to your Document Management/Control Procedures to REVIEW all documents periodically (any time period which makes sense for your organization) to determine whether they should be retained or discarded, regardless of whether they are obsolete. (Some obsolete documents [meaning they are no longer current revision] must be retained for life, health, safety purposes - in another thread about Volkswagen requirements, they mention retention for 30 or more years.)

[JRKH]

We had 2 file cabinets full (and I do mean FULL) of drawings, sketches etc from various customers. Rather than try to sort all of these, we removed these cabinets for an "archive" room and installed 2 new file cabinets. Then when a customer called for one of these parts we go to the archives, pull the drawing and verify it is current.

This was done about a 18 months ago, and the new cabinets are nowhere near full.

James

[Rob Nix]

This doesn't work in all cases, but when it does apply it works excellently: Determine the size of the file, bin, folder, box, or other container that holds EXACTLY the number of records for "n" years (or whatever retention time period) + say, 1/4th more. When the container is full, that is your cue to discard/destroy the "back" 20% of the records; then repeat the process.

[SteelMaiden]

One thing that I have done that works well is to file things by year, mark the retention on the front of the file....i.e xxxfile, 2001, retention 2 yrs min.

That way on or after January of 2004, I know that every file in that drawer is over 2 years old and I can toss them if I so choose. I just made sure that all the files were from same year and had the same minimum retention times.

[gheghe]

Thank you all for the inputs, I always appreciated all the help. It's so nice to be here at the cove.

[SteelWoman]

Originally Posted by Mike S.

Finally, I would say that after 2 years the documents may be destroyed at the discretion of the person in charge of that document. That way if you are busy and don't get the document destroyed after 2 years and 1 week you do not get dinged by an auditor over something minor.

Our Registrar brought up recently that in regards to TS you can not have a procedure that has a "may" dispose of - you actually have to have a MAXIMUM retention period after which it WILL be disposed of. See 4.2.4. She says it was motivated by automotive wanting to cover their collective behinds if they had a part, for instance, that YEARS down the road/after the fact was determined to be somehow defective - they wouldn't want too many of their suppliers having RECORDS of that run, now would they!?