Wow, guys - thanks for the feedback.
In our upcoming ISO upgrade, I'm really trying to weed out the redundancies in our documents. There are just a lot of documents that are poor all around - poorly phrased (sometimes to the point of illegibility), repetitive, and badly organized. It's a result of having a 4-tiered system in which the 3rd tier ("Level II" or supporting SOPs, and WIs) allowed for document generation on an "as-needed" basis. The result? If someone thinks we need one, boom! there it is. Numbered, approved, and ready for circulation. Got an NCR? Issue a new SOP...that'll fix it.
In some cases, justified...you need to leave room for your system to grow - especially in our case, where we're on the brink of rapid growth and the communication and documentation trails are becoming more and more critical. It wasn't that long ago that this company was a *lot* smaller...to the point of having completely undocumented departments. Why bother, when there are only 2 people in a department? (Keep in mind, this is the old department-based mentality talking...) All of a sudden, things are growing - the senior employees long for the days when they didn't have to fill out a stupid form just to bring in a wee supplier sample, and the newer people want an SOP for *everything* to make sure that all their bases (and, not coincidentally, their :ca: ) are covered.
But, in some cases, not justified. If I hire someone as a technician in a medical laboratory, and they have a bachelor's in biology or biochemistry, I would seriously consider letting them go if they asked me for a procedure on preparing microscope slides for throat swabs. I would assume that their 4 years' worth of biology labs would have provided them with those skills. And, sadly, that's the case at times here - an employee who wants an SOP spelled out for everything, even though he/she has a degree, a diploma or a background in this, that or the other, and was hired on the basis of those very credentials.
I have a degree in chemical engineering. I would think they'd expect me to know how to calculate a flowrate or do a simple mass balance...I would
expect to get canned if I
didn't.
There's my rant for the day.
I might be new to the forum, but it sounds like the construction of my soapbox is coming along mighty well.
