Hello IrishMike,
I'm a new guy here, but I thought I'd throw in my 2-cents worth.
We generate an Office document as our master file and it is saved in a controlled directory. Currently there are three of us who have editor rights to that directory.
Each document then has a PDF generated and these are placed in another area which is available to the shop floor. These files are read only. We started this because we are required to send documents to our customers and we will not send the originals.