Re: Departmental Work Instructions
Should those associates that work in a area or department write their own work instructions (owner)? A couple associates in my department that are new think that our area should re-write all work instructions. I totally disagree. We are not the experts they are. I have worked in quality for 18 years and I believe that a non-owner person of that work instruction will add no value. My area audits the departments that they want to write the work instructions for. Several persons are determined to change this.
I am a little confused. When you say "We are not the experts they are", who are "they"? Who wrote the original work instructions? And who is the owner of those work instructions?
Under the right circumstances, non-owners can add lots of value to a work instruction. Most particularly the folks actually doing the work and those affected by the work like internal clients.
We encourage anyone in our company edit any instruction. This captures knowledge much better than restrictive editing policies. The process owner may later revert any edit he feels wasn't an improvement, but this doesn't happen often. Most edits are small, incremental, and beneficial change. Instructions evolve and improve continuously.
Rewriting instructions wholesale seems a bit extreme, unless the docs are so bad that they aren't really used. If so, then I'd trust the folks actually doing the work to write a new instruction, and then let others and all improve on them.