From prsturgeon at yahoo.com  Fri Mar 24 06:32:59 2006
From: prsturgeon at yahoo.com (Peter Sturgeon)
Date: Fri, 24 Mar 2006 08:32:59 -0500 (EST)
Subject: Procedures for equipment that has a user guide--necessary?
Message-ID: <20060324133259.22960.qmail@web53013.mail.yahoo.com>

We're updating a couple of hundred standard operating procedures for a
biologics lab.

There are a couple of dozen procedures on various pieces of equipment.

In many cases, the contents are a distillation of critical pages from
the vendor's documentation.

Management thinking is that there doesn't need to be a in-house
procedure, merely a reference to the existing documentation.

My thinking is that a focused extract is more useful and efficient that
pointing the reader to a longer, denser manual. But I'm not management.

At other firms, I have built FAQs, quick reference material, and other
documents to reduce the cognitive overhead for employees, but I feel
that I need a better case for arguing, if I decide to argue.

Peter Sturgeon



From PoshedlyK at polysius.com  Fri Mar 24 09:20:17 2006
From: PoshedlyK at polysius.com (Poshedly, Ken)
Date: Fri, 24 Mar 2006 11:20:17 -0500
Subject: Procedures for equipment that has a user guide--necessary?
Message-ID: <737AFC2CC600B3419487F80030A84AC10B5B34@kp04s152.KP04D1.local>

There is distinct liability issue where your company's documentation
package includes the "raw" documentation supplied by a third-party
vendor.

An injured party will sue everyone involved -- including your employer.
The legal process will be pretty far along before settlements are
offered / taken. In any case, the layers win again.

Too often, it's a business decision during the budgeting process, "Which
costs more -- money spent on quality technical documentation or a
lawsuit settlement?" Even though I'm certain the money spent for you to
do a decent job is less than a potential settlement, it's still a gamble
that the company can go yet one MORE year without a lawsuit.

(And after a lawsuit is settled out of court, you're denied a salary
increase because of the legal settlement costs. <sigh>)

Ken in Atlanta
 

-----Original Message-----
From: bounce-stcscsig-l-276464 at lists.stc.org
[mailto:bounce-stcscsig-l-276464 at lists.stc.org] On Behalf Of Peter
Sturgeon
Sent: Friday, March 24, 2006 8:33 AM
To: STC Science SIG discussions
Subject: [stcscsig-l] Procedures for equipment that has a user
guide--necessary?

We're updating a couple of hundred standard operating procedures for a
biologics lab.

There are a couple of dozen procedures on various pieces of equipment.

In many cases, the contents are a distillation of critical pages from
the vendor's documentation.

Management thinking is that there doesn't need to be a in-house
procedure, merely a reference to the existing documentation.

My thinking is that a focused extract is more useful and efficient that
pointing the reader to a longer, denser manual. But I'm not management.

At other firms, I have built FAQs, quick reference material, and other
documents to reduce the cognitive overhead for employees, but I feel
that I need a better case for arguing, if I decide to argue.

Peter Sturgeon

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From prsturgeon at yahoo.com  Fri Mar 24 09:41:10 2006
From: prsturgeon at yahoo.com (Peter Sturgeon)
Date: Fri, 24 Mar 2006 11:41:10 -0500 (EST)
Subject: Procedures for equipment that has a user guide--necessary?
In-Reply-To: <LYRIS-255313-2835318-2006.03.24-09.27.04--prsturgeon#yahoo.com@lists.stc.org>
Message-ID: <20060324164110.7029.qmail@web53011.mail.yahoo.com>

Good point--hadn't thought about it from a legal point of view. These
will be internal procedures, but the risk of improperly rendering the
intent of the vendor document might still be a problem.


--- "Poshedly, Ken" <PoshedlyK at polysius.com> wrote:

> There is distinct liability issue where your company's documentation
> package includes the "raw" documentation supplied by a third-party
> vendor.




From ghart at videotron.ca  Fri Mar 24 11:14:46 2006
From: ghart at videotron.ca (Geoff Hart)
Date: Fri, 24 Mar 2006 13:14:46 -0500
Subject: Procedures for equipment that has a user guide--necessary?
In-Reply-To: 
 <LYRIS-101040-2835191-2006.03.24-06.39.45--ghart#videotron.ca@lists.stc.org>
References: 
 <LYRIS-101040-2835191-2006.03.24-06.39.45--ghart#videotron.ca@lists.stc.org>
Message-ID: <5fa5254bf1b0293b052c9a8d37221f17@videotron.ca>

Peter Sturgeon reports: <<We're updating a couple of hundred standard 
operating procedures for a biologics lab.>>

Sympathies. Quite the job!

<<There are a couple of dozen procedures on various pieces of 
equipment. In many cases, the contents are a distillation of critical 
pages from the vendor's documentation. Management thinking is that 
there doesn't need to be a in-house procedure, merely a reference to 
the existing documentation. My thinking is that a focused extract is 
more useful and efficient that pointing the reader to a longer, denser 
manual.>>

There's an argument in favor of both approaches. The biggest issue with 
producing your own distillation of the manufacturer guidelines, 
particularly in the context of lab safety, is that if someone follows 
your version, screws up, and gets hurt or damages the equipment or a 
colleague, liability shifts to you and your team (probably not your 
managers <g>) rather than to the manufacturer. In many cases, this 
suggests that you should not even try to condense the manufacturer 
information, but should instead refer users to it.

The advantage of summarizing is that you ensure the procedures are 
available to everyone, not just the lucky few who have the 
manufacturer's instructions handy on the bookshelf in their lab. This 
should not be a problem (i.e., there should be one copy in every lab 
that contains a device or machine), but my own lab experience tells me 
that such books tend to wander away and be lost--grad students take 
them home to study, janitors knock them into the trash, etc. Putting 
everything in one place (i.e., in your version of the procedures) 
offers a large efficiency advantage, and ensures that everyone has 
access to the necessary information. But it may be neither safe nor 
effective.

A strong and useful compromise solution may be to cover just the high 
points of your own internal safety procedures, with an exclusive 
emphasis on the procedural aspects where your guidelines are more 
strict than those of the manufacturers. That way, you provide an 
additional layer of protection to your colleagues, but leave liability 
(i.e., responsibility for describing the procedure correctly) where it 
belongs--on the manufacturers. You'll still have to carefully check for 
contradictions between your guidelines and those of the manufacturers, 
but because of the smaller number of differences, this becomes a more 
manageable task.

To address the problem of (un)availability of manufacturer information, 
try contacting the manufacturers and inquiring about the availability 
of PDF versions of their manuals. You can make these versions of the 
procedures available on the intranet, thereby ensuring that everyone 
can find them quickly. You'll need to implement a procedure for 
updating the PDFs, and specifically assign responsibility for this task 
to someone--make it a formal part of their job description, and write 
up a procedure for obtaining updates and for ensuring that the updates 
are correct. Management will have to oversee this to ensure it's done 
correctly.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - --
Geoff Hart   ghart at videotron.ca
(try geoffhart at mac.com if you don't get a reply)
www.geoff-hart.com
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -