Documentation Control

Introduction

Every business needs information on a daily basis and management decisions are made on information available at the time of the decision. Each decision is only as good as the quality of the information on hand. Implementation of a document management system will enhance this data accessibility and improve data security.

An effective documentation management system assures proper control over all documentation that affects the operation of the Business. This includes all aspects of receiving, registration, accessing, the use of, updating, transmitting, withdrawing of all forms of documentation, whether in paper form or on any other medium.

Not only to remain competitive, but also in many cases to stay in business, small companies are now required to implement quality systems as a requirement to being on a vendor list. A document management system will form part of any quality system implemented.

Ennead Consulting has developed Osiris, a system aimed at supplying businesses with an ‘easy to use’ and effective document management system.

Document Management

The product of the information area is not information per se, but a range of services that provide access to the content information put into the system by others. There are two distinct parts of information, namely content and index information, and must be managed by different management functions as follows:

• Content Information: the content of a document is the reason for the documents existence and is compiled by a knowledgeable person with the required authority.
• Index Information: the information that allows access to the content (i.e. identify, store, retrieve) and controls the distribution and status of the documentation.

To control a document you need to cover four broad aspects.

Identification

To uniquely identify a document, each document requires a reference number. This reference number should appear on the document and will also be part of the index information.

Status

Each document has to have a status in order to manage the document accordingly.

Change Control

Documentation is not static and changes do take place. It is just important to manage these changes and not try stifle the changes. A document may be revised a number of times during its life cycle.

Distribution

Distribution concerns tracking who has received a controlled copy of the document. It is important that all relevant people have the correct revision of the document. If a new revision has been received all relevant parties need to be notified.

Registered Documents

It is important that all the required documents do get registered. Often documents are received via other methods (other than post) and may not be re-directed to the correct person. It is thus important that all employees in a company are aware of the document registration process and will adhere to it. All documents created as a result of being in business should be registered so that they can be controlled according to the required processes.

Document Class

The system caters for different document classes, in other words you can register documents you wish to distribute or register documents you wish to control even though they are not in direct support of the business.

Support Documents

These are documents created as a direct result of being in business and need to be controlled throughout the document lifecycle e.g. policies, procedures, instructions, manuals, specifications, drawings etc.

Reference Documents

Documents you may not necessary wish to control through out its’ lifecycle but wish to reference from time to time e.g. law, act, catalogues, codes of practice etc.

Archive Documents

Documents which will not be revised but need to be controlled for other reasons e.g. report, certificate, study, correspondence, minutes, occurrence etc.