Procedures vs. work instructions?

[novusqc]

hello to all. ive posted several q/a and love the input. I am a self tought QC as many that have read my posts probably can tell. I have probably thumbed through a dozen or so books on ISO standards for years untill I got on the net. (Thank you wireless routers). I am soooooo happy that someone created a forum on quality assurance. The info and defrent opinions is invaluable.
I have a question on the diffrence between procedures and work instructions. The procedures for our QM are wrote kind of like work instructions. Is this bad, will it leave room for flaws during an external/internal audit. Little confused, some clarity would be very helpful.

 

[Jen Kirley]

Re: procedures vs work instructions?

Work instructions usually have more detail than procedures, and might focus on a single segment of the process versus the whole thing. Procedures are meant to bridge the gap bewteen work instructions and the quality manual, though I have also seen a great plenty of procedures that are so encyclopaedic that they could be called work instructions, ahem. The method is up to the organization to decide.

 

[Randy]

Re: procedures vs work instructions?

The real, real, real difference is what you define it to be....in fact you don't even need to use those words

 

[AndyN]

Re: procedures vs work instructions?

I agree with Randy!

You'll see the hoary old 'documentation pyramid' - that was created back in the early days of ISO 9001 (probably by the same folks who said ISO was 'Say what you do...".etc!) - in many books, QS-9000 and quality manuals etc (even posted here)

With the advent of the process orientation of quality management systems, as described in ISO 9001:2000, there is less need to adopt such a rigorous structure which has (only) three or four layers of documents.

Typically, a procedure describes a high level system or process. Like document control, from initiating a document into the qms, to making it obsolete and removing it to archive.

A work instruction might describe a specific step (s) in the procedure (like how to complete a document change form).

As Randy says, it's really up to you, based on a number of factors, like the educational level of the folks using this documentation, the complexity of the steps, etc. etc.

 

[Marc]

Two good discussions on this:

Procedure vs. Work Instruction (WI) - What is the difference?

How do you decide what is a Process, a Procedure or Work Instruction?

See these existing discussion threads:

Procedures vs. Work Instructions (WI)