Engineering Documentation Control Handbook: Configuration Management and Product Lifecycle Management

Excellent book on documentation control. Frank Watts tells you the correct way to control your documents and makes the comparison to other methods with the pitfalls of each.

I bought this as a reference book to help resolve document control situations/issues between Engineering & Plant Manufacturing in our small company (everyone seems to have their own idea of how systems should be organized). I find for the most part the text is very understandable in it's explanations, well-organized & informative. As I read through it, the examples & information deals with documentation control across the whole product lifecycle which I hope will help to "bridge" the communication & process"gaps" in our organization & will hopefully help us to be more effective & efficient overall.

This book is in excellent condition, the binding was ot broken and compared to a new book the cost was more than worth it.

I reference this book all the time. It has great insight into setting up and maintaining document control processes.

Arrived pretty faster than I thought and the item was as described

I bought this so I could better identify the do's and do not's of document control. So far I am very pleased with my purchase. As with any reference material, you have to look past the examples and get to the core concepts. Only with the concepts will you be able to apply these topics to your situation. For those out there that are tasked with implementing a PDM or PLM system, I highly recommend giving this book a read, especially if your current document control methods are lacking or non-existent.

Great

The author does a great job showboating his immense knowledge in this important subject, and also with building up excitement early on with all the wonderful benefits that a good documentation control system will bring, but upon completion of this book, I just didn't see the grand utopia come together that was described early on. The sections on Bill of Materials was disappointing as well as the example engineering drawings. If I were to use the same Title Blocks shown in the book, my boss would laugh at me and as far as the BOMs, they just seem better suited to a past generation -- BOMs I am used to seeing are much more complete and descriptive than the examples here. Also, there were examples on dealing with revised circuit cards and this was just very confusing where the author makes a case of a revised card being able to work in the system it is used in. If I were to plug a revised card in the system I work on, I would cause a plane crash. Maybe other technical fields will find this book helpful, and if it helps you, that's great, but for my case working in a small R&D company, I think I'll just figure out my own system.

very usefull book on how to manage documents & data in product development processes, although I am not sure yet if I agree with all principles that this book promotes

Certainly useful reading if you're dealing with any processes and systems in an Engineering design and manufacturing company. A solid reference of all aspects from part numbering, revisions of parts, BOMs, Engineering change management etc. Although updated (which is good), it shows it's age in places. The "rule then reason" structure is helpful to understand the why. The author is quite direct on some points, which i think is good, the goal of configuration management is clarity after all! I would say that some parts (revision rules, part numbering) cover the key points quickly, but do miss a more in depth discussion of pros and cons of the different ways to do things (and your staff usually have strong opinions on these, so more facts and worked examples are really helpful). So you do still need some knowledge of these things yourself, or at least make effort to debate examples of them yourself - wise to do before jumping into anything!

Very Good Book. Well written. It makes a relatively dry subject very readable. I work in a new manufacturing facility, and this has been crucial to help get our configuration management practices under control.

Very informative book with useful insights into configuration.