Control of Posted Notices on the Floor - What is considered a "Work Instruction"?

[marcus arelius]

If a document is "for reference only," it is "uncontrolled." Personnel are supposed to work only according to controlled documents. What kinds of documents are you issuing to the floor that are of value of people who cannot use them for work?

Sorry ISO 9001 Guy, I have revisited the initial posting and find I may have misread it with my knowledge of our own code of practice this is that, - Laminated signs issued to the shop floor for visual reminder marked with "Reference only" are also held in the process instructions.
Once again sorry if my posting was misleading.

 

[ISO 9001 Guy]

Controlled, per ISO 9001:2008, 4.2.3, means that a document is approved by management before issue, it is reviewed and updated as necessary, changes to controlled documents and their most current version is identified, they are available when and where they are needed, and suitable identification is applied to obsolete controlled documents to prevent confusion. (Thus they are controlled by being designated as obsolete.)

ISO 9001:2008, 4.2.3: "Documents required by the quality management system SHALL be controlled." If personnel NEED a document, a sign, even a book, to perform operations affecting quality, technically, those documents are required by the QMS; any documents management uses to control operations affecting quality are documents needed by the QMS. Thus they are supposed to be controlled by management somehow. That is the principle. Often controlling these documents is viewed to be impractical, but the controls placed over such documents don't need to be cumbersome or difficult.

It's too bad when auditors stretch the principles of the standard to their most extreme, to a point where no value is added by the findings and discussions like this rage on. However, this does not mean we should abandon the principle. This means we should demand better quality from auditors.

Should anyone in a company be authorized to post a sign for everybody else to follow? Think about that before dismissing it, please. Or should such instructional documentation be left to management-type personnel? By approving a posted sign, it can be easily determined if the sign was approved and posted by management for all to follow. But a signature/initials aren't absolutely necessary. In the case of posted instructions, it's certainly one of the easiest ways to indicate approval.

Regarding documents of external origin, perhaps like the books you use everyday to do your work, the principle here is that these books, like your own procedures, may become obsolete over time. Without some control over these documents, there is a danger that bad documentation will be used someday to process work.

If a documented "reminder" or any document is needed to control processing affecting product quality, should these needed documents be controlled? By the standard, yes. If these documents are not needed, they can be removed.

 

[Sidney Vianna]

If these documents are not needed, they can be removed.

Emphasis on CAN. The scenario that triggered this thread is one of those classic examples of a visual aid (textual in that case) to remind folks about something. I am sure that in the OP organization, people were instructed/told about turning the empty gas containers upside down.

If organizations are forced to add unnecessary bureaucracy to control these types of aids, they could then decide to drop the aids altogether, which would not add to the solution.

Meanwhile, some people keep providing Scott Adams with a lot of material:

 

[Stijloor]

Friends,

Amazing that this after 23 years of ISO 9000 is still an issue.

Rules rule instead of common sense to determine what's best for the organization and its customers...

Stijloor.

 

[ISO 9001 Guy]

Hey, I've seen situations where signs are useful and situations where they are overdone and counterproductive. (Reminiscent of a Simpson's episode.) Call it a rule or a principle or whatever, but being smart about rules and how they are applied is smart. Isn't it a common sensical rule or principle that only authorized personnel can post instructional documents for employees to follow--work aids, visual aids, signs, etc.? Is this just a silly ISO 9000 rule? Or is it common sense that anybody can make up instructional signs for personnel to follow and slather them all over the walls? Please understand it's all in how management defines it. I've written procedures authorizing personnel to write their own work instructions for a particular activity. In this case, for this type of document, management defined the controls needed to approve documents by authorizing personnel to write their instructions and have them approved by a supervisor or by another competent operator. It's all in how you define the controls. And yes, these were verified to be compliant controls.
In the case of a posted work aid, management could elect to extend approval authority to everyone. It might become messy very quickly. Is this common sense, or is a rule about who can post work instructions a bad idea? Sure, defining everyone as an approval authority of work aids complies with the standard, but is it good quality? Is it common sense? Even if approval authority for work aids were extended to everyone, some evidence of approval is required. Just terrible, isn't it? How much bureacracy is there in adding some initials to a sign you take the time to develop and hang--to indicate who approved of it before posting it? But then the nasty old standard even requires some means of identifying the most recent revision. Taking a second to scrawl the date beside one's initials is just too much?
If you have so many signs posted that taking a few minutes to look them over and approve them is a daunting task, you might have too much signage.
On the other hand, I've seen auditors try to find trouble with a sign that simply designated an area as "ON HOLD." I quickly pointed out that this was simply a label, not an instruction, and our procedures did not require labels to be approved.