ANSWER TO CONSUMER QUESTION - DOCUMENT CONTROL
Hi Aisling,
Without knowing your management systems intimately, it's a bit difficult to be precise as there are no hard and fast rules. So long as the documents within your systems are controlled and have a unique reference number/title, revision number, issue date and you have a system for ensuring that obsolete documents are removed from circulation and are archived or destroyed - whatever suits your systems.
In saying that I cannot understand why organisations split different disciplines into separate manuals e.g. quality, hygiene, health & safety, environmental - surely you want the operator doing the job to be continually considering all of the requirements. That's one of the problems with standards and certificates; companies set themselves up to meet the requirements of the standard and to demonstrate this to an auditor in a nice neat manual, but this isn't best for the business.
An example let's assume a company has ISO 9000:2000, OHSAS 18000, ISO 14000 and the BRC/IoP Packaging Standard - Would there be four seperate management review meetings? or would it be wise to have all four subjects on the agenda of one meeting.
A holistic approach is best and they call this an Integrated Management System (IMS). I will try and get some information for you (an expert was going to write some articles for the site I will have to chase him up).
Kind Regards,
Simon