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Seema:
> I have seen _version_ number with most product documentation
> deliverables, along with the _Part_ number. I wanted to know when each
of
> those change.
And the answer is: It depends.
It depends on the processes and procedures followed by the company that
is issuing the book, or it could depend upon the requirements by the
customer. Unfortunately, there really is no way that you can tell the
answer to this question by looking at the documentation. You'd have to
ask the company that produced the manual.
If the policy and procedure of the company is to give a new part number
to every revision of the book, so be it. There would be pros and cons to
this approach, but it could work.
The other (and I believe more common way) would be to establish a part
number for a given product, and maintain that part number for the life
cycle of the product. When the doc updates go out, they are identified
by some combination of revision number or date.
I've seen it done where the revision number might appear on the page
(REV 12 dated 1 JULY 2003), or where it might be an addition to the
basic part number (original issue was PN 123456-000, Rev 12 would be
123456-012). The latter starts to get close to changing the part number,
though.
What method should you use? Whichever one best meets your needs.
Bonnie Granat added:
>It would seem the version number lets users quickly determine whether
the
>document is for the version of the software that they have.
What if it's hardware documentation? (There is still some of that being
written, even these days...)
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