Interesting Discussion Using a Wiki to implement a Quality Management System (QMS)

[steveha]

Actually, in our case we do have "approval flow". It consists of two parts, and both are procedural requirements in our Document Control process:

1. Self-approval: We charge employees with modifying only those documents with which they are thoroughly familiar, and only provided that they judge themselves competent to edit. (If they do not feel they meet both conditions, then they must raise a CAR instead.)
2. Review: Upon an edit, the owner of the process to which the edited document belongs receives an RSS notification of the change, and he must review the change asap.

During QMS training, users of our documentation are reminded that they are reviewing the documents during their every use, and that they must compare the document with their own knowledge. If they spot typos or minor errors, they are free to correct them, subject to (1) above. And they do. Often.
...

Hey Pancho! Cannot believe it is 3 years on since I first posted to this thread, and I am finally close to trialling a wiki to part of my company!! If I am its birth parent, you are certainly its Godfather…
You refer to the “rules” for internal users of the Geometrica wiki being in your Document Control procedures, and you have mentioned a few of the rules, such as those quoted above, but how many more do you have, and what are there that have not occurred to me? – is it too presumptuous of me to ask if you could make a copy of those Document Control procedures available?
As part of creating a few User Help videos/tutorials, I am realising how many loose ends I still need to tie off, “rules of use” for a wiki-page-based set of procedures being a primary example! Fully understand if that is not possible, but a close second option is for you or others to point me in the direction of any such rules they know of. Any help hugely appreciated, cheers!

 

[Pancho]

Hi Steve,

At the end of this article you can find a condensed version of our document control procedure:

Using a Wiki for Document Control

Good luck!

 

[steveha]

Thanks Pancho, i had read that Geometrica article, but presumed there would be much more to it than that!
Perhaps my assumption is a telling one; "if its not complex, how can it be thorough?". Thanks again, and time permitting i will give an update on progress in case it is of any interest to others!

 

[qpled]

Thanks Pancho, i had read that Geometrica article, but presumed there would be much more to it than that!
Perhaps my assumption is a telling one; "if its not complex, how can it be thorough?". Thanks again, and time permitting i will give an update on progress in case it is of any interest to others!

definitely of interest - please post your progress!

 

[Vital0gy]

Pancho, et al.,

Thank you for the wealth of information contained within this multi-year thread! We are in the planning stages of migrating our QMS from QSi, Lotus Notes based system for document control, to a wiki system using Jira/Confluence. We already have Jira/Confluence in place for customer service ticketing and IT development. I have two questions for those that are using Jira/Confluence for their QMS:

1. Are there any tools within this setup that allow for scheduling internal audits, or reminders for documents that have to be reviewed annually?

2. Are there any tools within this setup that allow for the tracking of training for associates to new revisions or mandated classes, e.g. annual safety training?

Any assistance or insight is greatly appreciated!

 

[mmagargee]

Hello Vital0gy,
The solution depends on whether your Confluence is server based or hosted by Atlassian. Previous posters have pointed out that some plugins (Comalatech workflow for example) do not work for the hosted instance.

For tracking of training, we are using Avono read confirmations. We assign document training based on group membership. The macro allows tracking each user's response on the page and records the date of their read acknowledgement. To this we had to add a custom script to collect all assigned read confirmations from all required pages, but we can then put them together into a table (external). The macro allows deadlines to be assigned so that additional reminders only get sent to delinquent readers.

The other worthwhile macro is Comalatech's workflows. We don't trigger internal audits with this tool, preferring instead to schedule and send meeting requests through MS Outlook. But this has been very handy for our CAPA system. We can issue a corrective action with a due date and notifications are emailed from Confluence to those affected. If no response happens by the due date, additional actions can be triggered that range from reminder emails, to status changes of the CAR. There is also a multistep approval process involved that steps the CAR through planning, implementing, verifying, and then closed.

The workflow is working really well for our Calibration log. Although we collect paper records from our external lab, we enter the date of calibration on each instrument's page. We have an alert trigger thirty days in advance of calibration expiration that sends an email as a reminder to send the instrument out. We have also combined this with Service Rocket Reporting plugin. Tables created from the reporting plugin aggregate all of the instrument pages and are easily sortable by column heading. What I like to do, is to go to that table, click on the "Cal Pending" column to see what is coming due in the near future.

Best Regards,
Mike

 

[John Broomfield]

An interesting example of a wiki improving construction quality:

https://www.designingbuildings.co.uk/wiki/Home

How long before standards are made and maintained via the ISO wiki?

 

[tabort]

How long before standards are made and maintained via the ISO wiki?

Not soon enough.

 

[keldez]

Great thread!
I am in process of starting from scratch with Confluence and Comala Workflows with a half written QMS established in Word Doc form. For those using a wiki, are you finding any hurdles in writing your documents within the wiki versus tying existing document files to the wiki?
For those keeping Word files in your wiki, are you seeing any pros and cons to this?
I'm trying to be as open minded as possible with having everything inside of the wiki. It's just difficult with the ways of old so ingrained, and not taking any baby steps with this project. When in doubt, I look at the requirements and not old practices
Thanks

 

[SSchoepel]

I am in exactly the same place: Word, Comalatech, Confluence, draft QMS! We've had some interesting conversations about to handle things. If you would care to talk voice-to-voice, that might be very helpful for both of us.

S. Schoepel