Adding more forums - Getting Serious about a Big Job - Your suggestions?

[Atul Khandekar]

I spent some time copying/moving threads across forums today. Looking at the thread topics I thought may be it would be a good idea to split the some of the forums or create sub-forums (if possible) for major topics.

For example, 17025 forum could be split into separate forums for calibration and MSA. Statistical Techniques forum into SPC, Sampling, Six Sigma etc.

What is your opinion? Do you think it will help? Should we do this?

-Atul.

[Marc]

I'm moving this thread to the 'Forums Help' forum so others can offer their opinion as users.

It's not a bad idea. The question is the grouping. I've been thinking of ways to consolidate some forums. I deep sixed the Spanish forums last night as in the future there will be a 'language pack'. In addition, the Spanish forums were not really used with any frequency. Tonight I may merge a couple of other forums - the APQP and the FMEA forums. I'm not sure what to do with the VDA6 forums, but I may start an 'archive' or something.

One limitation is I' not sure want to drill down to have more levels that there are now. Part of that is the main listing and the amount of confusion new uers, in particular, are faced with. If there is a forum you visit which has multiple levels, give a link and I'll look at it

Right now when people come to the Forum Home - the main listing - they see a listing of groups with nothing hidden. I can make it, for example, so that all they see is the 'main' list of topics. Or, if we went deeper - say to 4 levels - I can tell the software to show can every level. What I don't know is whether there will be a performance hit or other issue.

I am afraid not to list all levels in the main screen because I want folks to see all levels and forum topics. Otherwise I believe we're building in confusion knowing how new this medium is to many people.

What I have tried to do over time - right or wrong - is to come up with 'categories' without having a separate forum for every niche. Right now there are about 50 individual forums spread out over seven main groups. If you print it out, it's 3 pages. I don't want to spread it out too much more.

For example, 17025 forum could be split into separate forums for calibration and MSA.

The original idea was that the 17025 forums was for questions specific to that standard. I combined Statistical Techniques and 6 sigma in one forum because for all intents and purposes 6 sigma is part of statistical techniques. And a lot of people might not relate calibration to 17025 because they don't know what 17025 is just as may will think of MSA with respect to APQP or QS 9000 or TS 16949.

If you have a suggested combination, I'll consider it. Just be complete and specific. And don't forget to take into account the attention to detail and the attention span of many users. Some folks will post wherever their mouse is. We want to make choices as clear as possible across the spectrum. The more we obfuscate the more work it makes to move threads to the 'appropriate' category.

I'll probably be shutting the forums down again tonight for several hours as I do a few more things to the forums listing. So, over the next week, after I've made changes tonight (or early Sun am), think about a grouping you believe would be more clear and appropriate.

[Howard Atkins]

At first when I discovered that the VDA forum had dissapeared I paniced and then started to PM Marc, then I saw the running headline.
First is the running headling effective, should it be more obvious. I don't know but it takes time to read and to releate too.

The main issue forum headings.
There must be divisions so that the interested reader can be able to know wht the thread is about.
Atul, If we subdivide threads it will start getting to complicated for the none expert member.

Specifically lets take the Automotive topics.
I would suggest the folowing:

1. TS
2. QS merged with VDA, for another year , VDA should be with auto and not in other standards as has been done.
3. APQP and FMEA to merge, I don't really understand why they were seperate.
4. Company standards - this is important.

I would also suggest

ISO9001:94 to close. It really is irrelevant today.
Non conformance and preventative to merge it would seem more logical.

I think that no more changes need to be made than these.
Any one else

[Marc]

As a quick note - none of the threads or posts have been pruned. As I reorganized I Moved them - I did not delete them.

Q: Is VDA 6 still relevant? What is the link to QS?

[Marc]

Originally Posted by Howard Atkins

SO9001:94 to close. It really is irrelevant today.

I've left it open because so many companies are still '94. Three years after the fact, however, point well taken.

APQP and FMEA to merge, I don't really understand why they were seperate.

They were separate because I saw APQP and PPAP as high level processes as opposed to FMEAs and Control Plans (and I shouldn't short thrift Process Flow Diagrams) which are (my paradigm) technical process documents. I thought about merging them tonight but decided not to. I'll consider further.

[Atul Khandekar]

Originally Posted by Marc

If there is a forum you visit which has multiple levels, give a link and I'll look at it

http://www.visualbasicforum.com/
The 'Web Programming' forum has several sub-forums : ASP, HTML, PHP etc. Click on 'Web Programming' and you will see the page with these sub-forums AND threads in the parent forum.

[Howard Atkins]

Q: Is VDA 6 still relevant? What is the link to QS?

It is still relevant as QS9000 and maybe more because it is not being phased out officially.
The link is that QS to US = VDA to Germany.
Maybe they should both be in customers specifications!

[Claes Gefvenberg]

Originally Posted by Howard Atkins

I would also suggest ISO9001:94 to close. It really is irrelevant today.

I think the proper course of action would be to close it 15 dec -2003... or maybe make it a subforum (for reference) of the current 9001:2000 forum, which could then be renamed ISO 9000 series...

/Claes