Re: Difference between Referenced and Uncontrolled documents?
Faith,
This is the method we have used in our business for sometime with regards to "reference documents", we only use the word Reference document when we are referring to something that is not controlled and truly does not effect product quality. In other words a reference document here is a telephone book or a hand written list of peer phone numbers or a periodic table of elements hanging in a chemical lab (the table may change, but its been a while). All documents that we use to support the QMS are controlled. I have pasted an excerpt below from my document control procedure, hope it helps.
Document owners responsibilities
Approval - Prior to issuing, documents must be approved and verified for completeness and adequacy. Approver(s) are identified in the document. Exception process: Emergency approvals can be made in certain situations, i.e., document servers are down and normal processing is unavailable, Approvers are unavailable for several days. Approvals made be obtained hardcopy and electronic approvals done as soon as possible.
Review and updates - As appropriate and necessary. This should be defined in the documents, or controlled by the document repository.
Changes and revision status - Controlled documents must contain information which identifies the current revision status and changes of the document.
Availability - Controlled Documents must be distributed or made available to all who need to have the latest / correct version of the document to do their job.
Legibility and Identification - Controlled documents must remain legible and be readily identifiable at points of use.
External documents - Controlled documents of external origin must be identified and their distribution controlled. It is the organizations responsibility to ensure the correct version required by the organization is available and meets the relevant criteria of this Document Control Procedure.
Obsolete documents - Controlled documents that are obsolete must be remove from use, and if retained for historical purposes must be appropriately identified to prevent unintended use.
Users responsibilities
Document user responsibilities include:
Alteration or duplication - The user is not permitted to make unauthorized alterations to the document.
Corrections - Contact document author or owner to revise document
Version - Verify version prior to use.
Completeness - Verify completeness of the document prior to use
Deviations - Request deviations from the owner of the document
Document users are responsible to ensure they are using the correct/latest version of a document if the document is removed from its controlled environment.
Obsolete documents - Destroy or return obsolete documents to the owner. If a user is responsibility to store back level documents they are to be kept in a manner that prevents unintentional use. Such documents are to be clearly marked "historical" , "archived" or similar wording.