P
A document distribution list is not a requirement of the standard, it's one very old-fashioned way of meeting 4.2.3.d. It was a military-style distribution method used when documents were paper and a numbered copy was held by each department. When there was a revision, the document control police would march around the building, locate the controlled copies, rip out the obsolete pages and replace them with nice shiny new ones – and they were fearsome: if you could not locate the department's copy within 30 seconds, you were toast.
These days, with electronic systems widely available, a document distribution list is often not necessary. For example, if documents are held online and available through a web-browser or an automated document control system, users can be taken automatically to the correct version and the need for the document distribution list is eliminated. Such documents are often labelled with a notice like “If printed, make sure it's up to date before use” making the user, not the document controller, responsible for checking that 4.2.3.d is met.
For external documents like ISO 9001 or customer specs, it often suffices to maintain a document distribution list in the form of subscriptions to an e-mail change notification list; when the document changes, send them an e-mail telling them the new revision and where to find it.
(That said, the differences between ISO 9001:2000 and ISO 9001:2008 were disappointingly trivial and led most organizations to change nothing; CBs provided an automatic upgrade in most cases.)
Hope this helps,
Pat
These days, with electronic systems widely available, a document distribution list is often not necessary. For example, if documents are held online and available through a web-browser or an automated document control system, users can be taken automatically to the correct version and the need for the document distribution list is eliminated. Such documents are often labelled with a notice like “If printed, make sure it's up to date before use” making the user, not the document controller, responsible for checking that 4.2.3.d is met.
For external documents like ISO 9001 or customer specs, it often suffices to maintain a document distribution list in the form of subscriptions to an e-mail change notification list; when the document changes, send them an e-mail telling them the new revision and where to find it.
(That said, the differences between ISO 9001:2000 and ISO 9001:2008 were disappointingly trivial and led most organizations to change nothing; CBs provided an automatic upgrade in most cases.)
Hope this helps,
Pat