Why put the owner of the document in the document or a log anyway?
I could be wrong but I would state in the manual that process owners (listed by job title) are responsible for documents used in their area of responsibilities. By implication and extension this means they are the document owners.
Someone please correct me if I'm wrong.
"Wrong" is such a heavy word.
The focus with document ownership, as with any aspect of developing a management system - be it quality, environment, health & safety, financial, business, etc. - should be on adding value to the organization.
Factors such as size, geographical make-up and process complexity may impact document ownership.
In my case, I have frequently seen documents that address a cross-functional process. As an example, the Request for Quote/Proposal process can include both Procurement, Engineering and even Quality. Who "owns" the document? How does an organization determine the best suitable owner? Engineering and Quality have been known to have a high interest in this process on the technical side. Procurement's interest is on cost and the paperwork (i.e., records).
Our solution was to select one owner with multiple approvers (due to the stakeholders). In the end, when it came to RFQ/RFP, we opted to designate Procurement as the owner of the process as they maintained the records.
The RFP/RFQ process was not the only cross-functional process that had multi-owner possibilities. Stating in the manual that the process owner is responsible may work for smaller organizations or those with less cross-functional documentation, but in the end it really depends on the organization and what will add the most value to their organization.
