Background to the Standard Operating Procedures Database

If applied correctly, every business and every individual in the workforce stands to benefit when an organisation sets, maintains and, indeed, strives to improve its standards. To implement this belief in a quality system, some businesses employ a set of Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs).

An SOP database needs therefore to store details of SOPs, employees, employee training requirements and employee competency.  In addition, there needs to be some means of identifying at a glance those employees who have not been fully trained.

Features

This SOP database was developed to substitute for a burdensome paper-based system.  Managers in this Oxford manufacturing company are faced with hundreds of SOPs, thus there is a need to assign quickly a set of SOPs to an employee, track the competency status continually and authorise when an employee is fully trained in all procedures.

The database stores all SOPs versions and Employee details.  The status of an SOP is dynamic, changing from day to day as newer, improved methods of working are developed by the workforce.  One day an SOP may be active, the next it may be quarantined, the next archived.  Concurrently, the newer version of the SOP may be in draft form.  Our SOP database tracks the entire history of all the SOP versions.

To save time, the database enables SOPs to be grouped.  Once a group of SOPs has been established, it may be allocated to any number of employees at the click of a button.  The underlying ‘traffic light’ system alerts a manager to an ‘untrained’ employee: a red STOP symbol indicates that an employee needs training and a green ‘tick’ (ü ) shows that an employee is 'fully trained'.  A variety of printable reports facilitate tracking employees' training status.

All staff use the database, with varying access rights: managers are able to add and edit records whereas employees may read records.  This security is accomplished at various levels, starting with user name and password to log on.  A full history of all managerial changes to records is kept in a separate database.

This database has three main modules: SOPs, Employees and Manufacturing Batch Records.

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