Iso 14001 Documentation

ISO 14001 Standard does not require an Environmental Manual. Despite this, almost all companies I worked with developed and used EMS Manuals. Many of our clients use a four-level structures, including records, as shown below:

Manual - level 1

Actually, the documentation structure starts from the policy. The policy, among others, defines the standard or standards a company intends to comply with. If you choose to use this approach, your Environmental Management System will have five levels, similar to the structure below:

Policy - level 1

Manual - level 2

Operating Procedures - level 3

Instructions - level 4

EMS Records - level 5

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ISO 14001 - Naming your documents

Companies use various approaches to titling their Environmental Manuals, procedures, instructions, etc. For example, one of my customers titled their EMS documentation management procedure as "Documentation Management - Document Control Operating Procedure." This very descriptive title does define the document, but it does not appear to be efficient.

The tendency to use long titles and document identifiers like "Standard Operating Procedure" most likely comes from regulated industries. Even though I could not find a requirement for such long titles, many companies still use these apparently outdated and inefficient conventions. If a short name adequately describes a document, let's use it. Consider this and do not make your system more complicated than it can be.

Document No's for your 14001 Management System

It is not a specific requirement of the ISO 14001 or any other standard to uniquely number a document. It is a common-sense measure and a worldwide practice in any documentation system, to give a document or a component a number and a title, and to identify its revision level. Similar to document titles that we discussed earlier, document numbering formats very often are also an opportunity for optimization.

Once I worked with an ISO 14001 certified company of less than 100 people, using fairly simple processes and having straight-forward environmental aspects. Their Environmental documentation system included a few numeration systems depending on the type of document. One of the procedures had a number 000298-001, which they simply called "one ninety Youth Robert Griffin III Jersey eight." Drawings were numbered in a format like 123-456-33-07.

One can certainly use these long-long numbers, but is it practical? So far I did not meet a single company that could justify such formats. When I audited this client, the organization had less than 350 documents. There were no indications that the company will significantly grow. Therefore, to Justin Smith Jersey use document number format allowing hundreds of thousands of numbers could hardly be justified. The most unreadable part numbers I had to deal with was at a mid size ISO 14001 organization with 13-digit alpha-numeric part number format! Try to write those in your audit report!

If you are constructing a Nuclear plant, running a Uranium mine or a submarine, your company may need millions of parts and procedures, so a long part number format would be needed. Otherwise, save yourself the trouble of writing all those zeros and make your numbering system practical. One of my ISO 14001 customers, who won my "The Best Part Number" Prize, numbered their ISO 14001 Environmental management system documents as 109, 110, 111, and so on. Short and sweet!

Another debatable issue with the part-numbering is part number designation. Some Environmental J.J. Watt Jersey Management Systems associate a part number with a particular part type. For example, 20-*** indicates a procedure, 30-*** indicates a Danieal Manning Jersey drawing, P-*** indicates a policy-level document and so on. My experience with a number of ISO 14001 businesses convinced me in the benefits of a "no designation" system. Three of my clients' systems that used designation failed. Just recently, one of my EMS customers reported that they ran out of range in their part-numbering format. The EMS allowed assigning materials through a two-digit designator within the part number. When the system was designed a few years ago, needing more than 99 materials was not considered possible. Unfortunately, company's needs changed over time, and just a few years later, the Environmental Management System needed more than 99 materials causing the existing part number format to fail.

There are good news and bad news. The bed news is that designation systems can fail. The good news is that there is another way of dealing with 14001 document numbers: no designation at all! Using such systems, you give documents or parts just sequential numbers. Going further, isn't the part title the best identifier of the part? One company I know did not use part numbers at all - their ISO procedures and instructions were simply identified by titles and their revision levels. Why would one care if the Environmental Aspects Procedure 01 also has 000764-01 identifier?!