Organisations have documentation as part of their management system because it provides objective evidence of product’s or service’s quality and shows the operation of the quality system employed. Thus, documentation gives visibility and clarity to the management system and allows people to see that it exists and how it operates. Moreover, companies depend on the training, skills and knowledge of their established staff, but people tend to change jobs and organisations. Documentation forms the basis of induction and training for new staff. This helps to ensure that new employees can continue to deliver high levels of quality. System Documentation also provides a good check list. If employees follow it, they know exactly what they should do and how it should be done, and nothing should be overlooked or left to chance. This results in fewer errors, improved productivity, satisfied customers and happy management.
However, there are several disadvantages of system documentation. For example, it is time consuming, propagates unnecessary bureaucracy, it should always be kept up-to-date and the most recent version should be distributed to the employees. Moreover, as a system grows, so does the volume of paper work.
In reality, unnecessary bureaucracy does not apply where the quality system is implemented correctly and/or where its operations are firmly controlled. Computing hardware and software help to perform paper and record administration faster and with relative ease. Thus, some of the disadvantages of system documentation can be avoided. This means that there are more benefits of system documentation and they outweigh the drawbacks. Moreover, despite of the disadvantages of system documentation the ISO 9000 series of standards requires that quality system should be documented. This also shows that benefits of documentation are more significant than its disadvantages.
