Document Management

Procedures and governing documents help the business to work more uniformly, efficiently and predictably. They make it easier to ensure quality, safeguard important expertise and clarify responsibilities and work processes.

When procedures are documented, it’s also easier to train new employees, reduce vulnerability and ensure that the business follows internal requirements and standards.

In practice, good procedures are about making it easier for employees to know what to do, how to do it and who is responsible.

The most important thing to understand is: That in a quality system, documents are first and foremost about “information“. Information about how critical tasks should be performed. Information that needs to go out to those who will perform the job. Information that must be updated – always.

That’s why these are not the type of documents you just keep in “one place” and pull out for an auditor once in a while. With that kind of focus, the quality system becomes just a booklet. But information that should be easily accessible at all times for all employees.

The ISO standard also has simple requirements that must be taken into account. In addition to ensuring that information is always up to date and easily accessible to all employees (a requirement), you must also ensure unique ID and version history. Maintaining old versions is included here.

Sharepoint and traditional document control systems are designed to store documents, not share information. Antenor BMS has been developed with good quality management in mind, where procedures are critical information to ensure that the “right first time” principle is upheld. The focus here is on information sharing and everything else is automated.

If you stick to the intention, you ensure that employees do the job right the first time and that the company isn’t left completely in the lurch if a key person leaves. There is great value in that.

It’s of no value if you create a document for the sole purpose of showing it to an auditor once. Then it just becomes a hassle.

No. The ISO 9001 standard has no requirements for specific procedures. Only that you relate to the purpose of governing documents and that you have a well-functioning organization. They’re just a recipe for how we’ve decided that various tasks should be solved.

NB. Some other standards, laws and regulations may require documented procedures.

The ISO standard will require you to have document control, unique numbering and version control, including history. Most importantly, it also requires documents (read information) to be easily accessible to all employees wherever they are.

Antenor BMS is specially developed for document and information management. Automated administration and everything is easily accessible to all employees.

If you stick to the intention, you should update them when there is a practical change in implementation. Otherwise, you won’t have any confidence in the content.

Therefore, it is critical that it is easy for the person responsible for the task to update these quickly and easily themselves. That you should not be dependent on a quality department for simple updates. In Antenor BMS, this process is fully automated so you don’t need a “quality manager” to update procedures etc.

This is a common issue, and the most common mistake many people make is that they don’t see procedures (and other documentation) as information to be distributed to employees, but rather as information to be shown to customers and auditors.

Employees take pride in what they do and are interested in doing a good job. If the information on how to do the job is not readily available, then of course it won’t be used.

Furthermore, we often see that this information, procedures, hasn’t been updated for a long time and then the employees no longer trust the information, even if they find it.

Using an Antenor BMS, it is easy to update documents, making it easier to maintain information. At the same time, the information is easily accessible via mobile, tablet and PC/Mac.

First, you need to establish a strategy for what you want to achieve with this. If you have a goal that this type of document is information that will ensure that we function well as a business, you have a good foundation. Then you can focus on what’s important to you, not what individual customers think is important.

Make sure to delegate ownership to the right person. The quality manager should be the facilitator, not the owner of the information.

One trap that many people fall into is that they buy everything their customers ask for and create documents on a conveyor belt after every audit or supplier evaluation form. Then it becomes a true chaos.

So focus on your own business. What value does this company provide?

Basically, procedures are something you have to tell employees how a job should be done. So you need to be concrete and clear. Not a lot of prose text. Think cookbook recipe or IKEA. When I’m making a new dish, I want to know exactly what I need and how to achieve a good result. Employees do the same in their day-to-day work.

So concise text, preferably point numbered paragraphs and images. Focus on the employee and NOT ON AN EXTERNAL AUDITOR. Most important of all. It must be prepared by the person who knows the job and has day-to-day responsibility for it. Ownership should and must be here.