Electronic Document Control in a Company - Organization of Files

[CottonS]

What would you recommend or is there recommendation when it comes to ISO and AS? The manufacturing manager wants to place all forms (no matter what department) in on place, all work instructions/ procedures in one folder(no matter what department). I would not have such a problem if I can make a folder in that location for paint, one for production. Everything is hyper-linked on the master list, but I still need simplicity for floor team members if they are required to get to that place.
What are your preferences.

 

[Marc]

Moved from How to better manage files on a personal computer? since it is more relevant to document control in companies.

 

[SteelMaiden]

Folders are great things for organizing files, but, the more folders you have the harder it is to find and hyperlink documents, and the greater chance you have of missing links if documents get moved from one folder to another. In our last update of our document control system, a person managed to convince the majority of the team to put a very complicated folder system in place. Now they wish they had not done so. You can do a lot of your sorting with your naming conventions if you plan carefully.

 

[Bogie]

I prefer a folder for each general area (Sales, QA, Production etc). In one place I worked at, there were so many Production forms and procedures that we also had several area folders within the Production folder (a function of working in a job shop that made about a billion different parts using a gajillion different machines - hopefully this isn't a problem that you have).

I prefer not to have them all mishmashed into just one folder, but that is mostly because the part numbering and naming conventions in most places are so bad, that finding anything is a huge chore othewise. Also, if a person doesn't know the exact name of the procedure, but does know what area it concerns, they have a better chance of finding it and aren't calling me everytime they need to look at a procedure.

If you go with just one folder, I would suggest you take great care with your naming convention (and part numbering convention - if applicable) as that will help keep like items grouped together.

 

[Bill Mitchell]

The biggest complaint I hear is that most programs are overwhelming and not compatible with their current system.

A very simple system I have had customers rave about is EZQMS. I believe you can find this via the web.

And no I do not have any affiliation with this company. Just an honest recommendation per feedback.

 

[esalsan]

What about an internal wiki page? It works fine for us, and you can organize your links as you wish. Each interested department could even have their own space...

In our case, the hyperlinks in the wiki are always pointed to the latest published version in a software and web-based Document Management System so that you don't need to update wiki links when something changes. But I supose you could have all your controled documents in that one folder and point to them.

There are plenty of discussions about wikis, if you are interested, just make a search. Wiki

 

[6thsense]

Well I for one have had it with the Paper-full System in Place and I am planning to go electronic. If my salary improves that is notme:

I have tested KnowledgeTree (the free edition) and it works like a charm. You dont need much IT expertise to even get it up and running. It is available here http://www.knowledgetree.org

Instead of the ordinary folder list. You set access levels and has a decent login page, coupled to a revision history for the documents.

I suggest you try it.

 

[Bill Mitchell]

I will have to check this out. Am always looking for a simple system for clients.

 

[hogheavenfarm]

I too have reorganized our files which were all paper to electronic format for availability throughout the organization. I used three folders, all write protected, called "Controlled Forms", "Controlled Procedures", and "Controlled records". Someday I hope to implement a wiki style conversion from this, but it was a start for a dept. with no budget.
Within the folders, there are folders grouped by process, instead of departments, since I found to much overlap between various departments, and I didn't want to duplicate information. For instance, we have a "preproduction planning process", which covers all forms and procedures throughout from quoting to contract review to MRP. This way, all my processes closely conform to the ISO procedures, and all documentation is related and available in one place.

 

[Helmut Jilling]

What would you recommend or is there recommendation when it comes to ISO and AS? The manufacturing manager wants to place all forms (no matter what department) in on place, all work instructions/ procedures in one folder(no matter what department). I would not have such a problem if I can make a folder in that location for paint, one for production. Everything is hyper-linked on the master list, but I still need simplicity for floor team members if they are required to get to that place.
What are your preferences.

Unless you are a very large company with hundreds of forms and docuemnts, the one folder approach for forms, and one for instructional documents, might make it easier for people to find what they are looking for. Finding electronic documents is the one hurdle, it has to be easy.

For records, and other docuemnts related to each process, I recommend one folder for each process you define in your QMS. That is the catch all for each department or process. But, I recommend forms all be in one, and many of my clients find that very clean and intuitive for people to use.