Develop Quality Management System Documentation In ISO 9000 Standards

Develop Quality Management System Documentation In ISO 9000 Standards
Documentation is the most common area of non-conformance among organizations wishing to implement ISO 9000 quality management systems. As one company pointed out: “When we started our implementation, we found that documentation was inadequate. Even absent, in some areas. Take calibration. Obviously it’s necessary, and obviously we do it, but it wasn’t being documented. Another area was inspection and testing. We inspect and test practically every item that leaves here, but our documentation was inadequate”.
Documentation of the quality management system should include:
1. Documented statements of a quality policy and quality objectives,
2. A quality manual,
3. Documented procedures and records required by the standard ISO 9001:2008, and
4. Documents needed by the organization to ensure the effective planning, operation and control of its processes.

Quality documentation is generally prepared in the three levels indicated below that follows. Use ISO 10013:1995 for guidance in quality documentation.

Level A: Quality manual
States the scope of the quality management system, including exclusions and details of their justification; and describes the processes of the quality management system and their interaction. Generally gives an organization profile; presents the organizational relationships and responsibilities of persons whose work affects quality and outlines the main procedures. It may also describe organization’s quality policy and quality objectives.

Level B: Quality management system procedures
Describes the activities of individual departments, how quality is controlled in each department and the checks that are carried out.

Level C: Quality documents (forms, reports, work instructions, etc.)
1. Work instructions describe in detail how specific tasks are performed; include drawing standards, methods of tests, customer’s specifications, etc.
2. Presents forms to be used for recording observations, etc.

ISO 9000 Standards – Document control procedures

ISO 9000 Standards – Document control procedures
The ISO 9000 Standards requires that a documented procedure be established to define the controls needed.

This requirement means that the methods for performing the various activities required to control different types of documents should be defined and documented.

Although the ISO 9000 standards implies that a single procedure is required, should you choose to produce several different procedures for handling the different types of documents it is doubtful that any auditor would deem this noncompliant. Where this might be questionable is in cases where there is no logical reason for such differences and where merging the procedures and settling on a best practice would improve efficiency and effectiveness.

Documents are recorded information and the purpose of the document
control process is to firstly ensure the appropriate information is available
where needed and secondly to prevent the inadvertent use of invalid
information. At each stage of the process are activities to be performed that
may require documented procedures in order to ensure consistency and
predictability. Procedures may not be necessary for each stage in the process.

Every process is likely to require the use of documents or generate documents and it is in the process descriptions that you define the documents that need to be controlled. Any document not referred to in your process descriptions is therefore, by definition, not essential to the achievement of quality and not required to be under control. It is not necessary to identify uncontrolled documents in such cases. If you had no way of tracing documents to a governing process, a means of separating controlled from uncontrolled may well be necessary.

The procedures that require the use or preparation of documents should also specify or invoke the procedures for their control. If the controls are unique to the document, they should be specified in the procedure that requires the document. You can produce one or more common procedures that deal with the controls that apply to all documents. The stages in the process may differ depending on the type of document and organizations involved in its preparation, approval, publication and use. One procedure may cater for all the processes but several may be needed.
The aspects you should cover in your document control procedures, (some
of which are addressed further in this chapter) are as follows
Planning new documents, funding, prior authorization, establishing need
etc.

- Preparation of documents, who prepares them, how they are drafted,
conventions for text, diagrams, forms etc.
- Standards for the format and content of documents, forms and diagrams.
- Document identification conventions.
- Issue notation, draft issues, post approval issues.
- Dating conventions, date of issue, date of approval or date of distribution.
- Document review, who reviews them and what evidence is retained.
- Document approval, who approves them and how approval is denoted.
- Document proving prior to use.
- Printing and publication, who does it and who checks it.
- Distribution of documents, who decides, who does it, who checks it.
- Use of documents, limitations, unauthorized copying and marking.
- Revision of issued documents, requests for revision, who approves the
request, who implements the change.
- Denoting changes, revision marks, reissues, sidelining, underlining.
Amending copies of issued documents, amendment instructions, and
amendment status.
- Indexing documents, listing documents by issue status.
- Document maintenance, keeping them current, periodic review.
- Document accessibility inside and outside normal working hours.
- Document security, unauthorized changes, copying, disposal, computer
viruses, fire and theft.
- Document filing, masters, copies, drafts, and custom binders.
- Document storage, libraries and archive, who controls location, loan
arrangements.
- Document retention and obsolescence.

With electronically stored documentation, the document database may provide many of the above features and may not need to be separately prescribed in your procedures. Only the tasks carried out by personnel need to be defined in your procedures. A help file associated with a document database is as much a documented procedure as a conventional paper based procedure.

ISO 9000 Standards – Document Approval

ISO 9000 Standards – Document Approval
The ISO 9000 Standards requires that documents be approved for adequacy prior to issue.

Approval prior to issue means that designated authorities have agreed the document before being made available for use. Whilst the term ade-
quacy is a little vague it should be taken as meaning that the document is judged as fit for the intended purpose. In a paper based system, this means approval before the document is distributed. With an electronic system, it means that the documents should be approved before they are published or made available to the user community.

The ISO 9000 Standards document control process needs to define the process by which documents are approved. In some cases it may not be necessary for anyone other than the approval authority to examine the documents. In others it may be necessary to set up a panel of reviewers to solicit their comments before approval is given.
It all depends on whether the approval authority has all the information
needed to make the decision and is therefore ‘competent’. One might think that the CEO could approve any document in the organization but just because a person is the most senior executive does not mean he or she is competent to perform any role in the organization.

Users should be the prime participants in the approval process so that the
resultant documents reflect their needs and are fit for the intended purpose. If the objective is stated in the document, does it fulfil that objective? If it is stated that the document applies to certain equipment, area or activity, does it cover that equipment, area or activity to the depth expected of such a document? One of the difficulties in soliciting comments to documents is that you will gather comment on what you have written but not on what you have omitted. A useful method is to ensure that the procedures requiring the document specify the acceptance criteria so that the reviewers and approvers can check the document against an agreed standard.

To demonstrate documents have been deemed as adequate prior to issue,
you will need to show that the document has been processed through the
prescribed document approval process. Where there is a review panel, a simple method is to employ a standard comment sheet on which reviewers can indicate their comments or signify that they have no comment. During the drafting process you may undertake several revisions. You may feel it
necessary to retain these in case of dispute later, but you are not required to do so. You also need to show that the current issue has been reviewed so your comment sheets need to indicate document issue status.