¿El Control de Documentos aplica solo por mantener una Norma ISO?

por Antonio Alvarez Antonio Alvarez | Dec 16, 2021 1:17:24 PM

 Documents control casa sauzaEverything is under control, we all like cleaning and tidying up.
In any business or social environment as the school, college and family, its possible to find groups of people who are messy and irresponsible, and on the other hand, we can always find certain individuals that impress you with their sense of order and creativity to solve problems and keep stuff organized. If one man can do it, why others can't? Keep reading and find it out.

Throughout my professional career, Documents Control has been a common element in the different environments I've been working at, from being a student and a teacher in a classroom, to working in my professional sphere as a Chemical Engineer.

There are only two sides of this coin:

(a) people are organized and disciplined when taking care of their documentation or,
(b) people are careful and creative to order, dispose of, maintain, and keep their documents;

In my opinion, the second scenario may be caused by discipline and culture, as well as commitment and obligation.

Common sense: Fulfilling The ISO Rule

 

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A clean and organized documentation repository its a huge help in any workplace, especially when you can find what you are looking for, easily and quickly. You save time and costs in any business by having all the documents you need at hand.

It has always caught our attention that classmate we had at school that always took notes in a clean, beautiful handwriting, even using colors and drawings in their notebooks. The same thing happens in the industry, with or without an implemented ISO Rule, where there are those employees that keep they technical sheets, operation manuals, and their activities record clean and organized. The benefit they gain by doing so is that as soon as they need certain information, they know exactly where to find it, how it is organized and what is the content about. Employees with these characteristics will have the information available right away and they will always put it back to its assigned storage space.

An organized and engaged employee will always be appreciated by his co-workers and clients

However, there also exist those employees whom the supervisor has to deal with every day, and you can notice them as soon as you observe how they keep their stuff. You know that any information you may need will take hours to appear. The lack of organization is evident.


Another example of this is the classic operator who didn't register the process variables on his data, and in the best scenario by the end of his work shift, he fills out the operations format with questionable data. Is he just inventing the results he wants his supervisor to see?

If a document is missing, is kind of suspicious to find it the next day in the cleanest and newest sheet of paper, contrasting with the rest of the file; this person needs urgent training, to practice it and commit him/herself to maintain the discipline as a last resort, or otherwise the supervisor should take him out of the team.

Traditional Documents Control

Keeping the important documents organized, that in terms of future benefits will avoid any accidental destruction or paper damage, protecting them from the environment and strange curious hands.


I observed all of this, back in my grandparents time: Document control extended to carefully storing commemorative photographs, civil registry documents, vital records, land titles, bills and even primary school and birth certificates.
This practice has also been applied to accounting documents in business and every taxpayer, due to some strict government demands. We don't want any pending issues with the Social Security or with Secretaria de Hacienda. Even though all the administrative requirements and paperwork are done in time, we like to keep our receipts and all kinds of proof. That way we don't have to worry about anything.

Documents Control Application

documents control iso standard casa sauza

As the saying in Mexico goes: Paper speaks ("papelito habla")


At home, at school, at work, and pretty much everywhere, documents are the only objective way of proving what it's being done, how it's being done, the implications of it, who has been involved and even to detail the costs. People have applied "Documents Control" before the ISO Rules existed in all the different spheres of their lives as their home, their school, their business...


In 1987, the first Administration Rule arose for the first time, published by the "Standardization International Organization", including the group of ISO 9000 rules about Documents Control. In this section, some of the best practices to organize and classify documents were recommended for every business that would like to demonstrate that they meet the minimum quality standards.

If you would like to know about other control practices regarding Documents Control in organizations and industries, I invite you to subscribe to this blog.

Read more about:

ISO 9001 in Agave Production

How to Improve Quality in a Production Line

Ebook información documentada, cumplimiento a la norma ISO

 

Lectura adicional