Glossary · Document and evidence governance
Documentation latency chain
In safety documentation, the documentation latency chain is the sequence of delays from an engineering change through review, approval, publication and user access. Its total is the documentation latency; each link has its own cause and owner.
- Technical documentation
- Compliance
In one sentence
The documentation latency chain breaks the delay after an engineering change into steps: notification, writing, review, approval, publication, access.
Example
For a conveyor speed change, the chain shows two days until the writer learns of it, three days to write, eight days waiting for safety review, one day to publish and two weeks until service tablets synchronize.
How it applies
- Technical documentation: Typical links are notification of the change, impact analysis on documentation, writing, translation, technical and safety review, approval, publication, and distribution to users. The longest link is rarely the writing.
- Improvement: Measure each link separately. Automated notifications from PLM or change control, parallel translation and review, and pull-based delivery to devices usually shorten the chain more than faster authoring.
- Machine safety: For safety-relevant changes, define a maximum acceptable latency and an interim measure if it cannot be met.
- Evidence: Time stamps for each link, kept in the change record, show auditors that the process is under control.
Documentation latency chain vs. change propagation
Change propagation describes which artifacts a change affects. The documentation latency chain describes how long it takes to update the documentation among them, step by step. Propagation answers “what”, the chain answers “how long and where it waits”.