Re: Stamping Documents with ‘For Reference Only’
Do you really think people are going to verify docs before use?
The standard requires all personnel to be sufficiently competent and aware at their particular level to avoid nonconformities, and also requires roles and responsibilities to be defined and documented and communicated at relevant levels and functions of the organization. These requirements apply to document control.
Obviously, it is unreasonable to expect people to check each and every document prior to use, but the main reason that people would need to do this is because document control is authorized for too few, resulting in documents that are unfamiliar and/or irrelevant to the user and methods of control that are not natural to the way things are normally done.
In theory, centralized control seems more effective and efficient, based on an idea similar to that of “too many cooks spoil a good soup.” In practice, what you have is document writers who are not responsible for carrying out the activities described in a document, and, since they don’t really know what “needs” documenting, they document everything, and make it apply to everyone. This becomes the source of excessive and unfamiliar documentation that only a few people read: the people who control it, not the people who need it.
Well-organized and controlled documentation is more than just ensuring everyone has the right revision level. The information contained in any document must be accurate, which means it must come from the proper source and be available (and meaningful) to a relevant audience. Document controls, just like operational controls, need to be at the relevant levels and functions of the organization. Documents describe criteria for performing operations and functions. No one group or person can control all the different operations and functions at an organization. Why do we think a single source can and should issue and control the related documentation?
Also, is it really more effective and efficient to make the people who know best funnel all their information through a remote source at a lower level of understanding just to maintain a “one-size-fits-all” control method? The fact that persistent, repetitive document control issues are rampant in these types of systems would seem to demonstrate otherwise.
Another problem with centralized control is that it teaches people that document control is not their concern and creates yet another obstacle to establishing a systems culture where the right people at the relevant levels people understand what they need to do and are sufficiently competent to do it.