Document Control

The Problems

Good document control is the foundation of any successful process, wheter you are attempting to register for conformance to a standard, or simply implementing a new process with a group of people and organizations. Controlling the location of documents, and the access to them is critical to success.

Cost is another factor. Mistakes can be very expensive, especially when an out of date document is used to develop critical parts or tooling, causing expensive rework costs and lower customer satisfaction. Most companies have invested heavily in their business processes and employee training. Can you afford to let poor document control undermine all of your efforts?

Do these problems sound familiar?

My people can’t find the correct document
There are too many different versions of my documents floating around
People have access to the wrong documents
Trying to approve document revisions by email is not working

The Needs

Organizations that are implementing a document control system must be able to do the following things well:

Store and Distribute Documents Electronically – Your labor intensive paper document storage and distribution systems need to be replaced with cost efficient electronic storage and retrieval. Document Storage needs to have a high degree of security around it so that it can not be accessed by unauthorized parties, and is only made available through one of the defined electronic distribution methods.
Exercise Revision Control – Documents go through continual change, and lessons learned are implemented. Organizations need to control which document is current, as well as maintain previous version of documents for historical reference.
Route Documents for Approval – Critical documents often need to have a number of people within the organization review it, provide comment, and ultimately approve or reject its release for general distribution. Document approval requires integrated workflow, comment entry and viewing, and rejection/approval processing.
Control Document Access – Document security is critical to any organization. Some documents have a very limited distribution while others are generally availability to everyone. The document control system must make sure that the correct documents are provided to the correct people.