RE: Compliance Documentation
Chris, Acrobat is very good. In addition to virtues already mentioned by others you can electronically "sign" PDF documents. Acrobat also has a Paper Capture function which runs an OCR on scanned text, converting it back into text which you can cut'n'paste back to other documents in Word etc. The OCR works well but the documents must be scanned at a certain DPI. It also requires you proof read documents carefully, even if you paste the text back into an application where you can use spell check. I once sent a scanned report out which I'd OCR'd so I could reformat in a document and spell checked it but where the word "burn" was now "bum" - and of course spell check don't catch those!! There are also plenty of bureaus who will do bulk scanning of any documents from A5 to A0 size. Some also offer cataloguing services. In the UK I have got work done at about £0.05 per A4 sheet for bulk scanning on an auto feed scanner, rising to £1.50 for A0 drawings done on a flatbed. Doing the scanning yourself is tedious unless you can buy a commercial type scanner (See Canon/Agfa etc. websites). Office/Home user type scanners are pretty slow and only go to A4 size documents. Chris -Original Message- From: Chris Maxwell [mailto:chris.maxw...@gnnettest.com] Sent: 16 February 2001 16:58 To: 'EMC-PSTC Internet Forum' Subject: Compliance Documentation Hi all, I do have a question, but the setup is sort of fun, so here goes: Well, I'm at that point. A few years ago, when the EMC Directive was first effective, we had a couple of products that we put through testing. We started keeping "Compliance Folders" which consisted of a cover report generated with MS Word combined with our in-house test reports and third party test reports held together with a big rubber band. This was fun for a couple of products. It was also fun when our company could remember what we called ourselves and what our product names/models were. Well, business is good...too good. The corporate captains have been buying other companies, OEMing products from other people, OEMing products to other people, changing the corporate name, changing the corporate logo, changing product model numbers ... (buying 25,000 coffee stirrers with our logo on them, we used about 20 before they changed the logo. Anybody what a now obsolete GN Nettest coffee stirrer?) Now I have about 20 large folders with anywhere from 100 to 600 pages each. Every time we go through these excercises, I spend hours sniffing toner at the copier (may explain some of my personality) putting different headers and revision numbers on these documents. I then go through 1000's of sheets of paper to run off copies for our representatives and then 100's of dollars in shipping costs to get these 10 pound paper packages to the four corners of the Earth. This is on top of the revisions that we normally incorporate for product re-tests, re-designs ... My question is, is there a better way? I have considered buying Adobe Acrobat and then converting all of my Word Documents to Adobe documents. Then I could scan in the attachments. All of this digital information, I could then store on a CD ROM drive with a main directory for my cover report and sub-directories for all of the various 3rd party reports, CDRH filings ... We could then offer our Compliance information via pdf files on the web. Is anyone doing this? Do you have any recommendations for what software to use? What scanners work best? What scanner resolution will duplicate test reports without losing precious information? Better yet. Does anybody know of a service where you can send 1000's of pages of info to them for them to scan and convert to pdf files. This would prove valuable during the initial conversion. Has anybody tried this and been sorry they did? I'm ready to go digital. My goal is to incorporate word processed reports, third party test lab paper copies, third party test lab pictures, hand written data ... into a coherent package for storage and revision. I assume that many of you fight this same battle. Any hints or pitfall warnings would be greatly appreciated. Chris Maxwell Design Engineer NetTest 6 Rhoads Drive, Building 4 Utica,NY 13502 email: chris.maxw...@gnnettest.com phone: 315-266-5128 fax: 315-797-8024 --- This message is from the IEEE EMC Society Product Safety Technical Committee emc-pstc discussion list. To cancel your subscription, send mail to: majord...@ieee.org with the single line: unsubscribe emc-pstc For help, send mail to the list administrators: Jim Bacher: jim_bac...@mail.monarch.com Michael Garretson:pstc_ad...@garretson.org For policy questions, send mail to: Richard Nute: ri...@ieee.org --- This message is from the IEEE EMC Society Product Safety Technical Committee emc-pstc discussion list. To cancel your subscription, s
Re: Compliance Documentation
Documents scanning can be pretty tedious and as you have mentioned not always resulting in what you want. I'm currently working on a trial test on document scanning with a specialist in the field, Arimtec International. The web site address is "http://www.arimtec.ca"; and the president's name is John Van Essen. I currently have anywhere between 600 and 2000 pages a week of documents which have to uploaded and distributed on a wide basis to about 400+ individuals across Canada. We looked at in house scanning and concluded it was not a desirable solution. The rest of our papers are already electronic and these are already distributed through electronic forum to 4500 people in total. Outsourcing the balance seemed to me to be the most prudent way of dealing with the volume and servicing the needs of the recipients.. Yours truly, G. Rae Dulmage "Bailey, Jeff" wrote: > Hi Chris, > > Nice lead in... :-P > > > I have considered buying Adobe Acrobat and then converting all of my Word > Documents to Adobe documents. Then I could scan in the attachments. All of > this digital information... > > > Great idea, I currently use Adobe Acrobat for what you are describing, it is > > a great tool and will let you make anything you print into a pdf by simply > printing to the "adobe printer driver", for MS Office docs there is a > special > driver that lets you import special formats (i.e. styles and TOC's in word) > and use them as bookmarks in your pdf. You can then go into acrobat and > edit > your bookmark tree to whatever extent you want to carry it. This can make > for > some pretty impressive looking docs. > > As far as scanning in documents goes... that may be a little tedious and I > have > never had much luck with keeping scanned docs looking very "clean" that's > why I > would never personally go the scanning route. If you can get a good scan > then > it might be alright but even then you may want to hire someone to scan it > all > because it would probably take an unusually long time... Do you have the > option > of going back to the test houses that evaluated your products and asking if > they > have soft copy available? > > > Better yet. Does anybody know of a service where you can send 1000's of > pages of info to them for them to scan and convert to pdf files. This would > prove valuable during the initial conversion. > > > You might want to try your local printshop, I haven't checked but there must > be > some entreprenuer out there that has thought of this. I can't imagine it > would > be cheap though... > > I think you're on the right track, since I started organizing my reports in > soft > form it has been much easier to refer back to it when needed as well as get > information to those who request it. I still keep one hard copy of > everything. > > One thing to watch out for is security, we all know how easy it is to track > electronic > copies right? :-P If you make versions that contain proprietary > information for > internal use you will need some way of ensureing those copies are never > distributed > by those who should know better but do not. > > Also be careful with the security options in Acrobat, you will want full > control over > the master copy but may want to limit editing/printing rights on the > distibuted versions.. > > Just a few things to think about... > > Cheers, > > Jeff Bailey > Compliance Engineering > SST - A Division of Woodhead Canada > Phone: (519) 725 5136 ext. 363 > Fax: (519) 725 1515 > mailto:jbai...@mysst.com > Web: www.sstech.on.ca > > All comments contained in the message are my own and do not necessarily > express the views of SST/Woodhead Canada. > > > -Original Message- > From: Chris Maxwell [mailto:chris.maxw...@gnnettest.com] > Sent: Friday, February 16, 2001 11:58 AM > To: 'EMC-PSTC Internet Forum' > Subject: Compliance Documentation > > Hi all, > > I do have a question, but the setup is sort of fun, so here goes: > > Well, I'm at that point. A few years ago, when the EMC Directive was first > effective, we had a couple of products that we put through testing. We > started keeping "Compliance Folders" which consisted of a cover report > generated with MS Word combined with our in-house test reports and third > party test reports held together with a big rubber band. > > This was fun for a couple of products. It was also fun when our company > could remember what we called ourselves and what our product names/models > were. Well, business is good...too good. The corporate captains have been > buying other companies, OEMing products from other people, OEMing products > to other people, changing the corporate name, changing the corporate logo, > changing product model numbers ... (buying 25,000 coffee stirrers with our > logo on them, we used about 20 before they changed the logo. Anybody what a > now obsolete GN Nettest coffee stirrer?) > > Now I have about 20 large folders with anywhere from 100 to 600 pages each. > Every time we
RE: Compliance Documentation
The "test reports" that I refer to don't have any detailed design information in them so an NDA is not an issue. Test data we have always given to any customer who asks for it. Usually the only customers to ask for a test report (data) want it because they are going to integate our product into one of their larger systems and they need to know what to expect when they go to test the system. Steve Grobe - Transition Networks -Original Message- From: Jim Eichner [mailto:jim.eich...@xantrex.com] Sent: Friday, February 16, 2001 3:12 PM To: 'EMC-PSTC - forum' Subject: RE: Compliance Documentation Re: "Anyone in our company has the ability to provide test reports to anyone who asks for them." Are you or is anyone else insisting on Non-disclosure agreements before handing over compliance reports? I don't mean Certificates or Declarations, which contain no test data or detailed product design info, but rather the full "engineering" reports? If so, do you attempt to control this? With paper copies, it's easy. If I don't think we have an NDA in place, I won't give the sales (usually) person the stuff to copy. With .pdf's on an intranet or shared drive, it's not so simple! Thanks, Jim -Original Message- From: Steve Grobe [mailto:ste...@transition.com] Sent: Friday, February 16, 2001 11:51 AM To: 'EMC-PSTC Internet Forum' Subject: RE: Compliance Documentation The test house we work with doesn't even send us reports on paper anymore. A couple weeks after testing a CD with my name on it shows up, on it are the test reports in pdf format. I copy these to our server, add hyperlinks to our intranet. Anyone in our company has the ability to provide test reports to anyone who asks for them. We haven't added them to our webpage yet but that may happen sometime this year. In my opinion digital is the only way to go. Steve Grobe - Transition Networks -Original Message- From: Chris Maxwell [mailto:chris.maxw...@gnnettest.com] Sent: Friday, February 16, 2001 10:58 AM To: 'EMC-PSTC Internet Forum' Subject: Compliance Documentation Hi all, I do have a question, but the setup is sort of fun, so here goes: Well, I'm at that point. A few years ago, when the EMC Directive was first effective, we had a couple of products that we put through testing. We started keeping "Compliance Folders" which consisted of a cover report generated with MS Word combined with our in-house test reports and third party test reports held together with a big rubber band. This was fun for a couple of products. It was also fun when our company could remember what we called ourselves and what our product names/models were. Well, business is good...too good. The corporate captains have been buying other companies, OEMing products from other people, OEMing products to other people, changing the corporate name, changing the corporate logo, changing product model numbers ... (buying 25,000 coffee stirrers with our logo on them, we used about 20 before they changed the logo. Anybody what a now obsolete GN Nettest coffee stirrer?) Now I have about 20 large folders with anywhere from 100 to 600 pages each. Every time we go through these excercises, I spend hours sniffing toner at the copier (may explain some of my personality) putting different headers and revision numbers on these documents. I then go through 1000's of sheets of paper to run off copies for our representatives and then 100's of dollars in shipping costs to get these 10 pound paper packages to the four corners of the Earth. This is on top of the revisions that we normally incorporate for product re-tests, re-designs ... My question is, is there a better way? I have considered buying Adobe Acrobat and then converting all of my Word Documents to Adobe documents. Then I could scan in the attachments. All of this digital information, I could then store on a CD ROM drive with a main directory for my cover report and sub-directories for all of the various 3rd party reports, CDRH filings ... We could then offer our Compliance information via pdf files on the web. Is anyone doing this? Do you have any recommendations for what software to use? What scanners work best? What scanner resolution will duplicate test reports without losing precious information? Better yet. Does anybody know of a service where you can send 1000's of pages of info to them for them to scan and convert to pdf files. This would prove valuable during the initial conversion. Has anybody tried this and been sorry they did? I'm ready to go digital. My goal is to incorporate word processed reports, third party test lab paper copies, third party test lab pictures, hand written data ... into a coherent package for storage and revision. I assume that many of you fight this same battle. Any hints or pitfall warnings would
RE: Compliance Documentation
Re: "Anyone in our company has the ability to provide test reports to anyone who asks for them." Are you or is anyone else insisting on Non-disclosure agreements before handing over compliance reports? I don't mean Certificates or Declarations, which contain no test data or detailed product design info, but rather the full "engineering" reports? If so, do you attempt to control this? With paper copies, it's easy. If I don't think we have an NDA in place, I won't give the sales (usually) person the stuff to copy. With .pdf's on an intranet or shared drive, it's not so simple! Thanks, Jim -Original Message- From: Steve Grobe [mailto:ste...@transition.com] Sent: Friday, February 16, 2001 11:51 AM To: 'EMC-PSTC Internet Forum' Subject: RE: Compliance Documentation The test house we work with doesn't even send us reports on paper anymore. A couple weeks after testing a CD with my name on it shows up, on it are the test reports in pdf format. I copy these to our server, add hyperlinks to our intranet. Anyone in our company has the ability to provide test reports to anyone who asks for them. We haven't added them to our webpage yet but that may happen sometime this year. In my opinion digital is the only way to go. Steve Grobe - Transition Networks -Original Message- From: Chris Maxwell [mailto:chris.maxw...@gnnettest.com] Sent: Friday, February 16, 2001 10:58 AM To: 'EMC-PSTC Internet Forum' Subject: Compliance Documentation Hi all, I do have a question, but the setup is sort of fun, so here goes: Well, I'm at that point. A few years ago, when the EMC Directive was first effective, we had a couple of products that we put through testing. We started keeping "Compliance Folders" which consisted of a cover report generated with MS Word combined with our in-house test reports and third party test reports held together with a big rubber band. This was fun for a couple of products. It was also fun when our company could remember what we called ourselves and what our product names/models were. Well, business is good...too good. The corporate captains have been buying other companies, OEMing products from other people, OEMing products to other people, changing the corporate name, changing the corporate logo, changing product model numbers ... (buying 25,000 coffee stirrers with our logo on them, we used about 20 before they changed the logo. Anybody what a now obsolete GN Nettest coffee stirrer?) Now I have about 20 large folders with anywhere from 100 to 600 pages each. Every time we go through these excercises, I spend hours sniffing toner at the copier (may explain some of my personality) putting different headers and revision numbers on these documents. I then go through 1000's of sheets of paper to run off copies for our representatives and then 100's of dollars in shipping costs to get these 10 pound paper packages to the four corners of the Earth. This is on top of the revisions that we normally incorporate for product re-tests, re-designs ... My question is, is there a better way? I have considered buying Adobe Acrobat and then converting all of my Word Documents to Adobe documents. Then I could scan in the attachments. All of this digital information, I could then store on a CD ROM drive with a main directory for my cover report and sub-directories for all of the various 3rd party reports, CDRH filings ... We could then offer our Compliance information via pdf files on the web. Is anyone doing this? Do you have any recommendations for what software to use? What scanners work best? What scanner resolution will duplicate test reports without losing precious information? Better yet. Does anybody know of a service where you can send 1000's of pages of info to them for them to scan and convert to pdf files. This would prove valuable during the initial conversion. Has anybody tried this and been sorry they did? I'm ready to go digital. My goal is to incorporate word processed reports, third party test lab paper copies, third party test lab pictures, hand written data ... into a coherent package for storage and revision. I assume that many of you fight this same battle. Any hints or pitfall warnings would be greatly appreciated. Chris Maxwell Design Engineer NetTest 6 Rhoads Drive, Building 4 Utica,NY 13502 email: chris.maxw...@gnnettest.com phone: 315-266-5128 fax: 315-797-8024 --- This message is from the IEEE EMC Society Product Safety Technical Committee emc-pstc discussion list. To cancel your subscription, send mail to: majord...@ieee.org with the single line: unsubscribe emc-pstc For help, send mail to the list administrators: Jim Bacher: jim_bac...@mail.monarch.com Michael Garretson:pstc_ad...@garretson.org For policy questions, send mail
RE: Compliance Documentation
Hi Chris, Nice lead in... :-P I have considered buying Adobe Acrobat and then converting all of my Word Documents to Adobe documents. Then I could scan in the attachments. All of this digital information... Great idea, I currently use Adobe Acrobat for what you are describing, it is a great tool and will let you make anything you print into a pdf by simply printing to the "adobe printer driver", for MS Office docs there is a special driver that lets you import special formats (i.e. styles and TOC's in word) and use them as bookmarks in your pdf. You can then go into acrobat and edit your bookmark tree to whatever extent you want to carry it. This can make for some pretty impressive looking docs. As far as scanning in documents goes... that may be a little tedious and I have never had much luck with keeping scanned docs looking very "clean" that's why I would never personally go the scanning route. If you can get a good scan then it might be alright but even then you may want to hire someone to scan it all because it would probably take an unusually long time... Do you have the option of going back to the test houses that evaluated your products and asking if they have soft copy available? Better yet. Does anybody know of a service where you can send 1000's of pages of info to them for them to scan and convert to pdf files. This would prove valuable during the initial conversion. You might want to try your local printshop, I haven't checked but there must be some entreprenuer out there that has thought of this. I can't imagine it would be cheap though... I think you're on the right track, since I started organizing my reports in soft form it has been much easier to refer back to it when needed as well as get information to those who request it. I still keep one hard copy of everything. One thing to watch out for is security, we all know how easy it is to track electronic copies right? :-P If you make versions that contain proprietary information for internal use you will need some way of ensureing those copies are never distributed by those who should know better but do not. Also be careful with the security options in Acrobat, you will want full control over the master copy but may want to limit editing/printing rights on the distibuted versions.. Just a few things to think about... Cheers, Jeff Bailey Compliance Engineering SST - A Division of Woodhead Canada Phone: (519) 725 5136 ext. 363 Fax: (519) 725 1515 mailto:jbai...@mysst.com Web: www.sstech.on.ca All comments contained in the message are my own and do not necessarily express the views of SST/Woodhead Canada. -Original Message- From: Chris Maxwell [mailto:chris.maxw...@gnnettest.com] Sent: Friday, February 16, 2001 11:58 AM To: 'EMC-PSTC Internet Forum' Subject: Compliance Documentation Hi all, I do have a question, but the setup is sort of fun, so here goes: Well, I'm at that point. A few years ago, when the EMC Directive was first effective, we had a couple of products that we put through testing. We started keeping "Compliance Folders" which consisted of a cover report generated with MS Word combined with our in-house test reports and third party test reports held together with a big rubber band. This was fun for a couple of products. It was also fun when our company could remember what we called ourselves and what our product names/models were. Well, business is good...too good. The corporate captains have been buying other companies, OEMing products from other people, OEMing products to other people, changing the corporate name, changing the corporate logo, changing product model numbers ... (buying 25,000 coffee stirrers with our logo on them, we used about 20 before they changed the logo. Anybody what a now obsolete GN Nettest coffee stirrer?) Now I have about 20 large folders with anywhere from 100 to 600 pages each. Every time we go through these excercises, I spend hours sniffing toner at the copier (may explain some of my personality) putting different headers and revision numbers on these documents. I then go through 1000's of sheets of paper to run off copies for our representatives and then 100's of dollars in shipping costs to get these 10 pound paper packages to the four corners of the Earth. This is on top of the revisions that we normally incorporate for product re-tests, re-designs ... My question is, is there a better way? I have considered buying Adobe Acrobat and then converting all of my Word Documents to Adobe documents. Then I could scan in the attachments. All of this digital information, I could then store on a CD ROM drive with a main directory for my cover report and sub-directories for all of the various 3rd party reports, CDRH filings ... We could then offer our Compliance information via pdf files on the web. Is anyone doing this? Do you have any recommendations for what software to use? What scanners work best? What scanner reso
RE: Compliance Documentation
The test house we work with doesn't even send us reports on paper anymore. A couple weeks after testing a CD with my name on it shows up, on it are the test reports in pdf format. I copy these to our server, add hyperlinks to our intranet. Anyone in our company has the ability to provide test reports to anyone who asks for them. We haven't added them to our webpage yet but that may happen sometime this year. In my opinion digital is the only way to go. Steve Grobe - Transition Networks -Original Message- From: Chris Maxwell [mailto:chris.maxw...@gnnettest.com] Sent: Friday, February 16, 2001 10:58 AM To: 'EMC-PSTC Internet Forum' Subject: Compliance Documentation Hi all, I do have a question, but the setup is sort of fun, so here goes: Well, I'm at that point. A few years ago, when the EMC Directive was first effective, we had a couple of products that we put through testing. We started keeping "Compliance Folders" which consisted of a cover report generated with MS Word combined with our in-house test reports and third party test reports held together with a big rubber band. This was fun for a couple of products. It was also fun when our company could remember what we called ourselves and what our product names/models were. Well, business is good...too good. The corporate captains have been buying other companies, OEMing products from other people, OEMing products to other people, changing the corporate name, changing the corporate logo, changing product model numbers ... (buying 25,000 coffee stirrers with our logo on them, we used about 20 before they changed the logo. Anybody what a now obsolete GN Nettest coffee stirrer?) Now I have about 20 large folders with anywhere from 100 to 600 pages each. Every time we go through these excercises, I spend hours sniffing toner at the copier (may explain some of my personality) putting different headers and revision numbers on these documents. I then go through 1000's of sheets of paper to run off copies for our representatives and then 100's of dollars in shipping costs to get these 10 pound paper packages to the four corners of the Earth. This is on top of the revisions that we normally incorporate for product re-tests, re-designs ... My question is, is there a better way? I have considered buying Adobe Acrobat and then converting all of my Word Documents to Adobe documents. Then I could scan in the attachments. All of this digital information, I could then store on a CD ROM drive with a main directory for my cover report and sub-directories for all of the various 3rd party reports, CDRH filings ... We could then offer our Compliance information via pdf files on the web. Is anyone doing this? Do you have any recommendations for what software to use? What scanners work best? What scanner resolution will duplicate test reports without losing precious information? Better yet. Does anybody know of a service where you can send 1000's of pages of info to them for them to scan and convert to pdf files. This would prove valuable during the initial conversion. Has anybody tried this and been sorry they did? I'm ready to go digital. My goal is to incorporate word processed reports, third party test lab paper copies, third party test lab pictures, hand written data ... into a coherent package for storage and revision. I assume that many of you fight this same battle. Any hints or pitfall warnings would be greatly appreciated. Chris Maxwell Design Engineer NetTest 6 Rhoads Drive, Building 4 Utica,NY 13502 email: chris.maxw...@gnnettest.com phone: 315-266-5128 fax: 315-797-8024 --- This message is from the IEEE EMC Society Product Safety Technical Committee emc-pstc discussion list. To cancel your subscription, send mail to: majord...@ieee.org with the single line: unsubscribe emc-pstc For help, send mail to the list administrators: Jim Bacher: jim_bac...@mail.monarch.com Michael Garretson:pstc_ad...@garretson.org For policy questions, send mail to: Richard Nute: ri...@ieee.org --- This message is from the IEEE EMC Society Product Safety Technical Committee emc-pstc discussion list. To cancel your subscription, send mail to: majord...@ieee.org with the single line: unsubscribe emc-pstc For help, send mail to the list administrators: Jim Bacher: jim_bac...@mail.monarch.com Michael Garretson:pstc_ad...@garretson.org For policy questions, send mail to: Richard Nute: ri...@ieee.org
