quality systems

How do you manage them?
The best way to manage external documents is to treat them as any other document in your management system.   This might mean scanning a document, registering a document and / or including the document into the document register, intranet or quality manual.  There is no need to rename, renumber, etc.  Just be specific with the naming conventions as with all other documents and ensure that there are 'triggers' in the system that will ensure external documents are reviewed and or re-issued as needed.  This may entail a subscription service, treating them as inventory, ensuring your service provider / supplier is aware of the importance your company.   The key is to remember NOT to make any extra work for yourself and to keep hard copy documents up to date at the various issue points.    But that's a whole new topic for future newsletters. 
 
The quality.com.au difference
Did you know that all quality.com.au clients who retain our management system support service has all of their standards catalogued and updated as part of the ongoing client support agreement?  This is a free of charge service that we provide and it ensures that if any standard is withdrawn, superceded, updated and / or introduced, we will advise you within one week.  We can even purchase the standard(s) for you at our highly discounted member rate as well.