Specification Management Software

[heidi]

We often deal with the issue of requiring our vendors to supply material to older revisions of specifications when required by military contract. Does anyone know of any software out there that can manage this -- meaning something that lists specifications with revsion levels and dates of revision, so that when a certain effectivity date is required by contract, the software can extract the correct spec revision without having to do it manually, one by one?

 

[Ron]

To do what your are asking would require a somewhat monumental effort. There are numerous specification and standards producing organizations that would have to be continually polled for revisions. For some groups, revisions are slow (ASTM, ANSI, etc.) while for others, revisions are common (manufacturers, etc.).

It would be great to have what you are asking for, I just can't conceive that anyone has put that effort in as yet, though you might check with one of the government groups that deals with a lot of specs and standards such as the US Army Corps of Engineers, Construction Engineering Research Lab (CERL) located in Illinois. I think the URL is

http://www.usace.army.mil/cerl

but you might want to do a search to verify.

 

[heidi]

Thanks Ron for your response. I'll check out the site you mentioned. Currently we use a "home-grown" data base of material specs (mostly just selected mils and ASTMs) that we use. It works, but we are faced with trying to integrate it into a new business system and that is where the problem lies. I'd like to know how other companies manage flowing down specification requirements in a concise way to their vendors, especially for military/navy applications where sometimes superceded specs are required.