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Document Mapping and Numbering: Ups Is Not A Good Practice. Document Mapping Starts From Quality Manual and Moves Down
Document Mapping and Numbering: Ups Is Not A Good Practice. Document Mapping Starts From Quality Manual and Moves Down
When it comes to organization of documentation system the most challenging task faced
by any Quality system/document controller is document mapping and traceability. QS
Documentation is divided into different tiers/ levels. However, such demarcation
between different tires is never absolute and large numbers of cross over cases are
encountered. Never the less these levels help in organization of documents. These tiers
are depicted in the figure below:
Best practice is to highlight or use different font color to identify the cited references in
the document.
Then prepare the list of such documents at the end of each document, preferably in
the reference section.
Though it may seem cumbersome to perform such exercise, it is must for developing a
correct, strong and reliable documentation system. One can use excel sheets to
perform such matrixing and verification of the cited documents.
Once the exercise of the documentation matrixing is done a pattern in references comes
out. Redundancy of the cited documents can be identified. These document follow 20%,
80% rule, i.e., most of the critical tasks (80%) in quality system are performed using
these 20% documents. These highly redundant documents shall be reviewed
minutely when change in documentation system is proposed.
Document numbers and document master lists forms document control database.
The numbering system shall be self explanatory and understood throughout the
organization. Different setups follow different document numbering systems which may
include numeric or alphabetic codes. These codes shall be designed in such a way that
they provide a clear traceability and ownership of the document.
Company: Invariably a part of document header and thus can be omitted from the coding
system.
Document Category: Code for documents at different tires such as manuals, procedures,
protocols, work instructions, Specifications, Drawings, Records etc.
An example of specification:
ANQC/SPEC/RM001/01
QC: Quality Control
SPEC: Specification
RM: Raw Material (other categories can be PM: packaging material, INT: Intermediates,
BS: Bulk Substance, FP: Finished Product, SOL: solutions, REG: Reagents, LBL: Labels
etc)