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ll, the boss sprang a new one on us in this morning's meeting. He wants
us to move toward becoming ISO 9000 compliant -- soonest! I could have seen
this one coming, given that
a) this boss is striving to bring our company standards forward into the
1970's, and
b) references on the net to ISO 9000 have been frequent and positive.
My questions are
a) What *exactly* does ISO 9000 mean in the world of documentors?
b) Does anyone out there have a recommendation for introductory books or
other references that will help get our dox team started?
Thanks!
Misti
ncr02!mdelaney -at- attmail -dot- com
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a) More work for writers.
b) To help get started in the right direction, you might consider
attending a seminar or class from a good source. Neville Clarke and
Perry Johnson Inc. have very good training. Johnson is at
1-800-800-5257. NC at 408/982-1828. Many colleges have ISO 9000
courses and certificates.
You will need a Quality Policy Manual, work instructions, procedures,
and maybe support documents and forms. Many use ISO's 20 points as
an outline for the manual.
We went the easy way. We put all docs online, which solved the problems
of security and maintenance. We use Frame and FrameViewer. All docs
are linked with hypertext, including references to other docs.
Printed docs are labeled as uncontrolled. The system is used world-wide.
There is only one source of input into the ISO system.
The auditors expect all workers to have the latest version of the
doc describing their job available at all times. This is very
hard to accomplish with hard copy, especially if you have hundreds
of docs being created and modified at the same time.
Someone should take an auditors course so that you will better
anticipate what they look for.
Garret's post is very good, but doc was not a small part of the
overall effort with us. Finding out what people REALLY did
started most of the efforts by other departments. The writers
have to get out there and find out how things are done, not
how they are supposed to be done.
In ISO doc, you must use active voice and state WHO is responsible
for every action. Not "The annual report is then filed."
Good luck. I know you will have lots of fun! ;-)
Bob Morrisette
writer -at- sabu -dot- EBay -dot- Sun -dot- COM
