Controlling Articles and Such Like
From the news group:
On 5/17/02 5:13 AM in article x Colin Green wrote :
> Our company is a manufacturing company for products built based on R &
> D results. We use a lot of Electrical Data Sheets from different
> manufacturers, Products Catalogue like RS Components, Farnell etc.,
> IEEE Reasearch papers and so on and so forth. In the Clause 4.2.3 it
> says to identify all the external orginal and to ensure no obsolete
> articles being refered to.
I don't know how an 'article' can become obsolete other than through a technology advancement which makes the information false or something. But that's an issue of engineers being up to date themselves. Surely an engineer today doing a design is not going to be depending upon - say, articles from the 1920's or something real dumb. This becomes a common sense issue. Nor - in most environments would one need to do other than reference an article. Again, though, it depends upon your product or processes. let's say you're designing a heart implant of some kind. There are going to be very stringent restrictions on what one had to have in the way of paperwork. In that case, if it was me I would probably print a copy of the article and include it in the project file. That it is in the project file 'controls' it. If you injection mold 1 inch tall toy figures for Cracker Jax boxes, you probably don't have to go this far, if you catch my drift.
And there is no need to include an article on some type of huge central index.
It reads:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
4.2.3 Control of Documents
Documents required by the quality management system are controlled. Records are a special type of document and are controlled according to the requirements given in 4.2.4 herein.
A documented procedure is established to define the controls needed:
a) to approve documents for adequacy prior to issue,
b) to review and update as necessary and re-approve documents,
c) to ensure that changes and the current revision status of documents are identified,
d) to ensure that relevant versions of applicable documents are available at points of use,
e) to ensure that documents remain legible and readily identifiable,
f) to ensure that documents of external origin are identified and their distribution controlled, and
g) to prevent the unintended use of obsolete documents, and to apply suitable identification to them if they are retained for any purpose.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
There are many different types of document and how you control each depends upon its importance and relevance. Document control must be looked at widely and does not require everything to be in an index per se.
> I appreciate that some engineers at work do not actually print out
> every single research paper that use for design (only quoting the
> reference), which if tthey refer to any URL that may be not there
> after a few years, or print out every Datasheet of the electronics
> components that they use, which will be out-of-date soon.
>
> Our company has already accumulated tons of the above material. In
> order to go back to index all the technical catalogue, it would be
> really a nigthmare.
>
> I am sure there is a better way of doing this...
Basically remember you don't have to have one big central index, or an index at all, per se. Documents have to be controlled but only to a reasonable degree. Also remember - it is well understood that data sheets and such go out of date. But - usually at the time of the design they are correct and appropriate. At that time the design engineer knows the requirements for a given component and finds one that fits the requirement.
Once the design is frozen those spec sheets mean little because in the event of a design change the appropriate design engineers will know this - or should considering what the responsibilities of a design engineer are. In that case, the engineer will probably not have to look at the spec sheets for the original components, but will be more interested in component changes so the latest spec sheet at the time of the design change. Remember that the original design outputs should have defined the requirements for that component (operating temp and environment, voltage, etc., etc.). The engineer reviewing the design change may even find a different component to use which is better and/or cheaper and the old spec sheet won't mean anything anyway.
Index them all? No need.
From the news group:
On 5/17/02 5:13 AM in article x Colin Green wrote :
> Our company is a manufacturing company for products built based on R &
> D results. We use a lot of Electrical Data Sheets from different
> manufacturers, Products Catalogue like RS Components, Farnell etc.,
> IEEE Reasearch papers and so on and so forth. In the Clause 4.2.3 it
> says to identify all the external orginal and to ensure no obsolete
> articles being refered to.
I don't know how an 'article' can become obsolete other than through a technology advancement which makes the information false or something. But that's an issue of engineers being up to date themselves. Surely an engineer today doing a design is not going to be depending upon - say, articles from the 1920's or something real dumb. This becomes a common sense issue. Nor - in most environments would one need to do other than reference an article. Again, though, it depends upon your product or processes. let's say you're designing a heart implant of some kind. There are going to be very stringent restrictions on what one had to have in the way of paperwork. In that case, if it was me I would probably print a copy of the article and include it in the project file. That it is in the project file 'controls' it. If you injection mold 1 inch tall toy figures for Cracker Jax boxes, you probably don't have to go this far, if you catch my drift.
And there is no need to include an article on some type of huge central index.
It reads:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
4.2.3 Control of Documents
Documents required by the quality management system are controlled. Records are a special type of document and are controlled according to the requirements given in 4.2.4 herein.
A documented procedure is established to define the controls needed:
a) to approve documents for adequacy prior to issue,
b) to review and update as necessary and re-approve documents,
c) to ensure that changes and the current revision status of documents are identified,
d) to ensure that relevant versions of applicable documents are available at points of use,
e) to ensure that documents remain legible and readily identifiable,
f) to ensure that documents of external origin are identified and their distribution controlled, and
g) to prevent the unintended use of obsolete documents, and to apply suitable identification to them if they are retained for any purpose.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
There are many different types of document and how you control each depends upon its importance and relevance. Document control must be looked at widely and does not require everything to be in an index per se.
> I appreciate that some engineers at work do not actually print out
> every single research paper that use for design (only quoting the
> reference), which if tthey refer to any URL that may be not there
> after a few years, or print out every Datasheet of the electronics
> components that they use, which will be out-of-date soon.
>
> Our company has already accumulated tons of the above material. In
> order to go back to index all the technical catalogue, it would be
> really a nigthmare.
>
> I am sure there is a better way of doing this...
Basically remember you don't have to have one big central index, or an index at all, per se. Documents have to be controlled but only to a reasonable degree. Also remember - it is well understood that data sheets and such go out of date. But - usually at the time of the design they are correct and appropriate. At that time the design engineer knows the requirements for a given component and finds one that fits the requirement.
Once the design is frozen those spec sheets mean little because in the event of a design change the appropriate design engineers will know this - or should considering what the responsibilities of a design engineer are. In that case, the engineer will probably not have to look at the spec sheets for the original components, but will be more interested in component changes so the latest spec sheet at the time of the design change. Remember that the original design outputs should have defined the requirements for that component (operating temp and environment, voltage, etc., etc.). The engineer reviewing the design change may even find a different component to use which is better and/or cheaper and the old spec sheet won't mean anything anyway.
Index them all? No need.