Document Control Metrics

[JimS]

I've seen very little this topic and can't seem to find anything meaningful at the moment, though I'm certain I've seen a discussion or two on it.

What are meaningful metrics for Document Control? We're ISO 9001 certified and also IATF 16949 compliant.

We're asked to have at least one efficiency metric and one effectiveness metric. We currently capture time to approve a new/revised document (SOP, etc) as our efficiency metric, with a target of three days or less. I think this is valid.

For effectiveness, we capture percentage of documents rejected during "checking" (Doc control checks it for basic formatting, DCR # and date, revision, proper footer, etc before going for final approval), targeting <5%. And on the engineering side we do the same thing with ECO's rejected.

I'm not seeing much value in these % rejected metrics. We just had our first ECO rejected in over a year, and it was partly due to process issues with a new electronic system we just implemented. For the QMS docs, I'm thinking it would be better to capture % of docs rejected during the final approval, since those are technical rejections on content, not formatting, etc.

What are some other useful QMS doc control metrics? What are you tracking?

 

[indubioush]

At a previous company, we categorized the type of change, for example, design change, process change, compliance update, etc. One of the categories was called inadvertent error, which meant that the document was on change order recently, was released, and after that, it was discovered that something was missed on the change order and a new change order was required to correct the error. For example, you changed a form to have a new section, but when the associated work instruction was also revised, instructions on the new section were inadvertently not added. This indicates a review failure because if the reviewers really were paying attention, they would have caught the mistake. You are always going to have rejected ECOs. You don't want to put your company in the position where they are afraid to reject an ECO because of the metric. Best to have one really good doc control person who categorizes each change order where you can gain insight based on the categorization.

 

[Mike S.]

Is this an internal requirement to have at least one efficiency metric and one effectiveness metric? What is most important to the internal customer(s) of the doc control process? Ask them, and it may give you a metric.

Just having metrics for the sake of having metrics is a waste.

 

[JimS]

I'm pushing back on what the requirement really is. I want to say it was an IATF ask but I'll see what the QM says. I agree that a metric for the sake of having a chart to show is crazy. That's why our ECO rejections metric isn't currently meaningful - if we never reject any, then the numbers aren't going to lead us to improve anything - unlike a previous employer where we had to track how many ECOs were rejected, how many were rejected a second time, a third time... Oh, yes. Then we had to get into the who's and the why's. Plenty of fodder for improvement there.

Doc Control is ensuring the right document is available to the right people when they need them. With automated systems, almost everything happens electronically in a controlled manner that pretty much ensures all that will happen. And we're also a fairly small outfit, so there aren't many places left to look for issues.

Thanks for the input. Just wondering if someone has some interesting ideas I hadn't thought of yet.