Controlling Revisions of External Documents - Documents of External Origin

[wweng7]

What would be the best method for controlling revisions on external documents i.e. specifications like AMS, MIL standards etc?

 

[qualitytrec]

Re: External documents

Not to be trite but the one that is most effective and efficient for your company.
I would suggest assigning an owner, log a place or places of distribution where the information can be accessed by authorized interested parties and recording a date of reciept and acceptance by an autority of the organization.
Then you should assign someone to check for updates periodically or make arrangements with the publisher to be notified if there is an update.

Just my thoughts, not sure there is a best fit that will work for everyone though.

Mark

 

[Jeff Frost]

Re: External documents

My organization is driven by specifications such as the ones your referenced. We contracted with a service to supply documents to us on demand and to notify us when purchased documents have been revised. We then developed an access database to track the documents in-house which contains:

• Title of document
• Document number
• On-hand revision of document
• Current revision of document
• Location of document in-house (QA, Engineering, Test Lab, etc.)

We do not purchase revisions of documents until such time as it is specified on the customers PO or Drawing as a requirement.

Hope this helps

 

[AndyN]

Re: External documents

What would be the best method for controlling revisions on external documents i.e. specifications like AMS, MIL standards etc?

From an external perspective, get signed up with an updating service. They will take your list of external standards, etc. and keep you advised of changes.

Internally, find who uses the standards, put out a distribution list and use the updates to advise the users.......

 

[Wes Bucey]

Re: External documents

Not to be trite but the one that is most effective and efficient for your company.
I would suggest assigning an owner, log a place or places of distribution where the information can be accessed by authorized interested parties and recording a date of reciept and acceptance by an autority of the organization.
Then you should assign someone to check for updates periodically or make arrangements with the publisher to be notified if there is an update.

Just my thoughts, not sure there is a best fit that will work for everyone though.

Mark

heres the deal:
two things are important when dealing with outside documents - Mark has called attention to the most important
1) assuring you, yourself, have the most recent valid version of an outside document for your organization
2) creating a system to store and retrieve the documents as needed, assuring only the current or "pertinent" version is retrieved (sometimes you need to refer to obsolete documents when in a repair or maintenance situation.)

Depending how many outside documents in your system, and how many individuals in your organization will need access, you can

1. do something as simple as keeping a notebook or series of notebooks of the document and adding new revisions and deleting or marking the obsolete versions as necessary.
2. You can get as complicated as obtaining electronic versions or creating electronic versions by scanning hard copies for transmission to all affected parties (employees, customers, suppliers, users), which can be cataloged and cross-indexed for instant retrieval by any authorized user of your system.

 

[Ted Schmitt]

Re: External documents

My system is ultra simple....

I developed a simple EXCEL spreadsheet simple example attached - you can add all the standards / documents you wish

Every six months I check www.ihs.com and see if there are any updates...

It´s simple as I said, and has worked so far...

 

[andygr]

We have actualy subscribed to the IHS site and just left it the same for all other documents as if it is printed it is uncontroled.
I hear that they are signifigantly increasing their cost and so will look to change to the same method as tedschmitt of using using them to identify what the changes are and keep our internal listing up to date revewing it every 6 months.

 

[ScottK]

Re: External documents

My system is ultra simple....

I developed a simple EXCEL spreadsheet simple example attached - you can add all the standards / documents you wish

Every six months I check www.ihs.com and see if there are any updates...

It´s simple as I said, and has worked so far...

I have almost exactly the same system and even use IHS for my standards as well.
But I have them checked once per year rather than every six months.
It's defined in our document control system.

 

[ScottK]

We have actualy subscribed to the IHS site and just left it the same for all other documents as if it is printed it is uncontroled.
I hear that they are signifigantly increasing their cost and so will look to change to the same method as tedschmitt of using using them to identify what the changes are and keep our internal listing up to date revewing it every 6 months.

IHS keeps bugging me to subscribe but we don't spend enough on standards in a year to warrant it. Even including the day it takes an engineering guy to compare our list to theirs.
Fact is - we have a lot of standards on hand (probably about 33% of them) that were purchased to satisfy one customer and we never used it again. So those don't get updated unless/until we need to reference it again.

 

[wweng7]

From ScottK:
IHS keeps bugging me to subscribe but we don't spend enough on standards in a year to warrant it. Even including the day it takes an engineering guy to compare our list to theirs.
Fact is - we have a lot of standards on hand (probably about 33% of them) that were purchased to satisfy one customer and we never used it again. So those don't get updated unless/until we need to reference it again.

Yes, we are in the same boat looking for less expensive alternatives. Thanks all for your inputs which were very informative and I will certainly implement some.