Catch 22 Part Three

I showed all the multiple revisions of the procedures to my supervisor. She told me to go through our entire area and pull the old copies of documentation, tear them up and throw them away. I didn't have a solid method for weeding out the old paperwork. There wasn't anything concrete to go off of. I responded by saying that I wasn't comfortable with simply tossing away our documentation and on top of that I felt this wan't my job to be auditing our procedures. Isn't this why we have a documentation control department? I had enough to do already. Instead I suggested she remove the old stuff once someone could identify it all and put it in her office. Keep it as a reference, for backwards traceability like some branches of military service do. That way if a new procedure wasn't found to be a great improvement or a unforseen problem arose we could look back on the old way of doing the same job and figure out what we might be doing wrong. She thought about it for a few moments and agreed, this was a good idea.

I also asked that she add more checks and balances to the company's documentation control by giving copies of new revisions to key people in each area of production. Those key people would be responsible for replacing their older paperwork with the new and make sure all of the assemblers and test operators in their area were aware a new procedure was now on the shop floor. This seemed like a common sense approach to me, but my boss didn't like it at all. "I don't want people to have personal copies of procedures," she said. That wasn't what I was getting at. I tried to clarify what I was talking about but it didn't get through.

Back in the Closed Area I talked with Marty about this conversation with our manager. I told him in one case I used him as an example to her. If a new procedure was released for a test set in his area, it would go to him first. He would locate all the old copies in his room and then turn them in to our boss. The new procedure would immediately go into the master list binder located on his desk for all of us to reference if needed. Marty would also make sure each one of us sat down and read the new documents as soon as possible. He liked the plan, but when I told him our boss didn't dig it he said, "Then we will continue to have these problems." He's right. We will.