posted 12 November 1998 12:46 AM               

Subject: Re: Q: Intranet & Document Control/Kohn/Andrews/Robinson
Date: Mon, 2 Nov 1998 09:52:58 -0600
From: ISO Standards Discussion

From: R2 Innovations
Subject: RE: Q: Intranet & Document Control/Kohn/Andrews/Robinson

Ethan Andrews recently responded:

> One could certainly have outdated documents at point of use, provided
> objective evidence showed that systems were in place (and were effective)
> to preclude their use (as in revision level check prior to use). It is not
> recommended that one has out-of-date documents lying around; however,
> merely their existence would not automatically provide a nonconformity. One
> would need to look at how their unintended use was controlled.
>

Another situation that my company, located in Canada, faces everyday is that of legacy programs. Let me explain:

In the aerospace business we are often called upon to build products in the same manner as we did 5 or 10 years ago. This may be due to the airline, usually in a 3rd world country or some other remote area, not being equipped to handle the latest all-electronic gagetry in use today. Their planes are 10 or 15 years old and have old technology componentry. We must build them the products they can use and maintain.

When this happens, we establish a program plan which calls up the processes and procedures that will be used. In this document we place a copy of those procedures (retrieved from archives in an Appendix of the plan), and they are controlled through our configuration management process. This 'old-but-new' documentation is now valid for use _on that program only_ and does not interfere with the current documentation required for today's work.

This system has met the challenge of two registration audits, and three maintenance audits since we received our ISO 9001 registration in 1994. This same system is used at other facilities of our company located in the U.S. and audited by a different registrar.