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

[Stijloor]

Pancho,

You will next time.

Jan.

 

[Stijloor]

Pancho,

In the automotive (supply) business, FMEA records are considered "living" documents. They need to be updated when changes in design and/or processes occur. That could be for good (inprovement) or not so good (nonconformities) reasons.

Would a Wiki be appropriate to process these changes? It is usually a Core Team (fairly small group) that owns the FMEA records. Whar are your thoughts?

 

[Pancho]

In the automotive (supply) business, FMEA records are considered "living" documents. They need to be updated when changes in design and/or processes occur. That could be for good (inprovement) or not so good (nonconformities) reasons.

Would a Wiki be appropriate to process these changes? It is usually a Core Team (fairly small group) that owns the FMEA records. What are your thoughts?

The version control in a wiki is ideal making a document come "alive" and up to date with design or process changes. But whenever you need to fit structured data (like FMEA tables) into a wiki there are a couple of problems: most wikis do not allow formulas in their tables, and if the tables grow beyond a small size, they become impractical to maintain.

We are currently implementing BS 18000 and are using the wiki for the risk analysis and controls tables. Initially we got around the lack of formulas or lookup functions by using Excel files uploaded to the wiki, but this solution was less than ideal because often different "core teams" ended up with large variations in format and data, and wiki changes would not propagate to the excel files. We then tried a canned database solution. That worked better, but it was not easily reachable from within the QMS documents (in the wiki), where the tables would be most useful.

In order to solve both problems we wrote a small database web app that works from inside the wiki. Now every work instruction can display its risk analysis table right below it in its same wiki page. Lookups are done from a common set of catalogs, and formulas are consistent among all tables, even when authored by different teams. And the tables contain links to related documents. The solution is working great, but it did involve a bit of programming (we used Ruby on Rails).

 

[vercrj]

Hi Pancho,


I am in the process of changing our QMS semi-paper approach to a more sophisticated soft approach, and have been impressed about your Wiki approach articles which are very enlightening!!

I am just puzzled whether to take the full Wiki approach (considering Confluence for the moment), or the IT-proposed Sharepoint approach (which has strong document control features).

Or go for instance for Confluence with sharepoint integration.

We are a manufacturing company, currently all my QMS documents are hosted in folders on the server right now (mainly word, excell and Visio)

Important for me is to get rid of the physical signature approval, it all needs to be electronic in the future.

I want to keep the system open for ISO14001 integration and more as well, direction towards a nice integrated IMS.

And the solution needs to be fairly straightforward and as easy as possible - I am not an IT guru.

Would appreciate your view on this!

Thanks a lot

Johan

 

[Pancho]

Hi Pancho,


I am in the process of changing our QMS semi-paper approach to a more sophisticated soft approach, and have been impressed about your Wiki approach articles which are very enlightening!!

I am just puzzled whether to take the full Wiki approach (considering Confluence for the moment), or the IT-proposed Sharepoint approach (which has strong document control features).

Or go for instance for Confluence with sharepoint integration.

We are a manufacturing company, currently all my QMS documents are hosted in folders on the server right now (mainly word, excell and Visio)

Important for me is to get rid of the physical signature approval, it all needs to be electronic in the future.

I want to keep the system open for ISO14001 integration and more as well, direction towards a nice integrated IMS.

And the solution needs to be fairly straightforward and as easy as possible - I am not an IT guru (and neither are our IT guys )

Would appreciate your view on this!

Thanks a lot

Johan

Hi, Johan,

I believe Sharepoint would be the easiest if you already have your documents. It has great search across most available file formats and you get a wiki front end. There are many resellers that will create for you great preset structures onto which you can hang your existing library. It is integrated with email and chat, and likely can be integrated with your ERP, accounting or other software.

Confluence and other wiki solutions can also act as document repositories, but integration with email, chat and other software is harder. And I am not sure that search of non-wiki files in Confluence is as comprehensive as it is in Sharepoint.

Where wikis shine is in easy editing and easy linking. These features are very important, but under-appreciated. With them documents become alive and improve much faster than as office docs. We converted all our old style documents to wiki format to great benefit.

So, IMO, use Sharepoint if you want easy and quick porting of your existing, mature library. But if you want your system to improve, having your documentation in a wiki will help you do it way faster.

Theoretically, you could use Sharepoint (or even Confluence) as a file server and slowly convert over to wiki. But the advantages of having document inter-linking only come after a substantial proportion of them are already in wiki form. If you do not take the plunge of converting to wiki format with the initial project, it may be harder to do it later.

Good luck!
Pancho

 

[vercrj]

Thanks Pancho for your view!


I agree with you that the easy editing and easy linking of Wikis is a great advantage.
And I would like the slower but most user friendly approach, since the system will have to be transfered to mulitple plants.
In sharepoint indeed, like also our IT guys say, integration with mail and our ERP would be easy.
Any advice you can give on companies / resellers that can provide for a good preset structure? Because that is the basis of a healthy and transparent system.

On the other hand, maybe sharepoint integration in Confluence sounds ideal, anybody who has done this who can tell me how nice this works?

Need too much guidance, guess I am too new in this (or getting too old )

Thanks
Johan

 

[Pancho]

Any advice you can give on companies / resellers that can provide for a good preset structure?

Did meet a few at a recent trade show, but I'm not familiar enough with any of them to recommend. You can probably google Sharepoint consultants in the Emirates.

On the combination of Confluence and Sharepoint, I think this may be more suited for organizations that start with various grass-roots systems at department or sub levels, and then find themselves with the need to integrate. If you have the opportunity to get everyone on board right off, its probably best to use a single platform.

 

[vercrj]

BSC integration in the QMS Wiki ?

Expanding on the QMS in wiki format, I am also planning to integrate BSC (Balance Score Card) in the intranet wiki.

For our continuous improvement, we are trending (graphically) KPI's.
Currently on spreadsheets, but would like to automate this with queries of some sort and displaying it real time (or monthly updated, which seems to be a more realistic approach) on the intranet. The information resides mostly on our ERP SQL server

Just wondering if this is easier done in Sharepoint with wiki front end, or plain Wiki like Confluence, or combination....

Any ideas more than welcome!

 

[Pancho]

Re: BSC integration in the QMS Wiki ?

Expanding on the QMS in wiki format, I am also planning to integrate BSC (Balance Score Card) in the intranet wiki.

For our continuous improvement, we are trending (graphically) KPI's.
Currently on spreadsheets, but would like to automate this with queries of some sort and displaying it real time (or monthly updated, which seems to be a more realistic approach) on the intranet. The information resides mostly on our ERP SQL server

Just wondering if this is easier done in Sharepoint with wiki front end, or plain Wiki like Confluence, or combination....

Johan,

If your database is accessible from a browser, then you can probably display it within most wikis.

We use the Projectforum engine, and Bugzilla for our CAPA db. We can insert Bugzilla graphs and reports live and directly into the wiki by a custom link. We also use Ruby on Rails for our OSHA risk analysis db and reports from that are displayed in real time in the wiki.

For spreadsheets, cad drawings and other info not accessible through a browser we usually take a screenshot for display in the wiki and upload both the image and the file. In these cases, either Sharepoint or Confluence have an edge over Projectforum because they can display some of the files natively. You will save that extra step of the screenshot.

Pancho

 

[AnaMariaVR2]

Great thread...Pancho congratulations on your QMS wiki...I've had my eyes on that for a while...maybe one day I can implement something like that at work.

How about Document Control?
How is that addressed?

regards to all,
Ana