Having a document control system is a requirement of quality standards and regulations worldwide. In this article, we will try to better understand what a document control system is.
A document control system can be defined as a formal set of tools and processes that enable the systematic creation, approval, distribution, and archiving of a company's documents throughout their lifecycle. Document control systems can be paper-based and manual, or electronic and automated, and bring order to complex operations, with the aim of making companies more capable of organizing their business to provide quality products and services.
ISO 9001 requires formally controlling how quality documents are approved, stored, protected, and kept legible, retrievable, retained, updated, modified in a controlled manner, and disposed of. With these processes in place, you can safely create and maintain all the workflows, processes, and procedures you need to develop and produce your products consistently and with the right quality.
A control system must protect documents so that information is not lost, damaged, or misused, organize data and information logically so that it can be retrieved when needed, ensure that each document is always updated to its latest version, retrievable whenever needed, and not modifiable without authorization.
When building a document system, it is good to avoid excessively prescriptive documents and systems that impose procedures beyond what is necessary to meet company, stakeholder, and reference standard requirements. In fact, excessive documentation can slow down work, create inefficiencies, and cause employees to avoid using it. Elaborating too much and doing more work than necessary is unnecessary and even harmful.
The best thing to do would be to set up electronic document management systems that are able to provide the right level of control but also reduce the time required for manual management and eliminate all unnecessary bureaucracy to support your way of working. Make sure you stay focused only on preparing the documentation needed to build the products your customers want at the required quality level. Managing everything else would only risk causing unnecessary non-conformities.