I hear ya tschones...
Right now our system involves running the approval process through a "redline" route, where the each department head affected by the document gets the chance to edit/elaborate/whatever on the procedure before going through the official "signoff" phase. This first phase travels around in a nice red folder with each person involved listed on the front, as well as the procedure name, revision status, date it was initiated, etc. Each person involved sends it to the next one on the list in the folder. Typical time spent on this stage seems to be measured in weeks, maybe months...
After everybody's got a crack at it, I revise it and then it goes through the "green folder" stage for final approval. This doesn't take quite as long, maybe a few days to a week or two.
All the documents in question are stored in our Document Control Center as Word files, Excel spreadsheets, Visio diagrams, etc., yet the system I walked into on my first day is still being implemented via "sneaker Net" as well. Then comes the fun task of making sure all the books are changed throughout the plant.
All in all, a typical document on a good run will take about 2 months to implement in the books in a plant of roughly 500 employees. The last one I just did started in 2/03, just got it back in green folder today (10/28/03).
/rant off
I've been seeing posts concerning Outlook for verification or "polling" on the document in question, does anybody have any experience in other ways to implement an online/electronic version? At the moment, I am keeping track of what revisions are out there via a matrix in Excel, but have no way of knowing where/who has the folder in question.