22-Nov-2006 - Documentation

ISO 9001 requires that companies maintain a great deal of documentation. It his crucial that all the documents available are available for the entire company and placed in an organized structure of folders that concern all areas of the organization. You can use the intranet to do so but one must be very cautious in the organization of the web site in order that finding a document doesn’t become a nightmare and the use is intuitive.

It is also important to determine which documents, that have versions, need to have history. Most of the documents are only useful on their last version, for others it is helpful to have the previous versions. That can be interesting for instance in the requirements document for a software project, so information about the evolution of the product, the moments of change and the way it was redesigned might be available.

It’s important to understand that ISO 9001 wasn’t designed to create a great deal of paperwork but to allow companies to continuously improve quality, and as in everything History is important to recognize the good things and bad things from the past and construct a better future.