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Wes Bucey asked me to start this new thread to discuss some of the things I found "messed up" in my current read. The title of the book is "Engineering Documentation Control Handbook" by Frank B. Watts.
In the thread where Wes asked me to elaborate, I mentioned that this author indicates in several locations that "every use of a form should have a form instruction" which I do not agree with, and I don't think others here do, either.
During a discussion on writing and formatting standards, the author states, "Since we are talking about standards to be audited (by CM, Internal Auditor or ISO) the best decision is to cover inter-departmental steps but to exclude the intra-departmental steps. Each department might have their own "work instructions" which should generally be left out of the CM 'manual' and left out of audits." Later he indicates that you should "include elements of the processes which are cross-departmental/functional. Do not include departmental instructions since they are/should be subject to rapid change and aren't cross-departmental business" and "the (procedure) shall not contain a separate section for cross-references to other related or associated (procedures). This practice creates a "web" that is very difficult to originate and to keep up to date." This is counter to the process approach of the current ISO-9001 standard.
In general, I also do not agree that "in order to be systematic and well-understood (a system) needs to be documented". I understand his intention, but you should never say "all", "never", "every", etc.
He does mention an ISO CM guideline, ISO-10007. Has anyone seen this? Is it worth a viewing?
In general, the book has some great ideas for creating a fast-acting document control/configuration management system. The only other thing I have to say is that he focuses on just the design-related document control, and only eludes to others. I think he could really open this subject up. Look at what everyone here has to say about document control! We could write a book!
In the thread where Wes asked me to elaborate, I mentioned that this author indicates in several locations that "every use of a form should have a form instruction" which I do not agree with, and I don't think others here do, either.
During a discussion on writing and formatting standards, the author states, "Since we are talking about standards to be audited (by CM, Internal Auditor or ISO) the best decision is to cover inter-departmental steps but to exclude the intra-departmental steps. Each department might have their own "work instructions" which should generally be left out of the CM 'manual' and left out of audits." Later he indicates that you should "include elements of the processes which are cross-departmental/functional. Do not include departmental instructions since they are/should be subject to rapid change and aren't cross-departmental business" and "the (procedure) shall not contain a separate section for cross-references to other related or associated (procedures). This practice creates a "web" that is very difficult to originate and to keep up to date." This is counter to the process approach of the current ISO-9001 standard.
In general, I also do not agree that "in order to be systematic and well-understood (a system) needs to be documented". I understand his intention, but you should never say "all", "never", "every", etc.
He does mention an ISO CM guideline, ISO-10007. Has anyone seen this? Is it worth a viewing?
In general, the book has some great ideas for creating a fast-acting document control/configuration management system. The only other thing I have to say is that he focuses on just the design-related document control, and only eludes to others. I think he could really open this subject up. Look at what everyone here has to say about document control! We could write a book!
