Discussion: How do you treat old rev drawings?

[rlampley]

I have a situation where due to human error, an older revision drawing was printed and built to causing customer complaints and internal corrective action measures.  Now we do show the current lifecycle state on our drawings, and in theory, the old rev drawing is/was Prod Released.  We have had one suggestion to mark old rev drawings as obsolete, but then I feel you will lose track of what version was released and what is truly obsolete.  Not a good suggestion in my opinion.

So my question to the community, how do you folks treat/manage your old rev drawings?  Do you do anything particular to the drawing to mark it as out of date or superseded by a newer rev?  Do you restrict access?  I am looking for a poka-yoke solution here to prevent future recurrences. 

Is watermarking smart enough to know how to update an earlier rev drawing when the latest version is released?

Appreciate your time and comments.

[MikeLockwood]

In general, using watermarking effectively is the answer rather than showing the lifecycle state on the drawing.

Many don't take advantage of it, but one of the most important elements of Windchill is to use a different watermark for each state.  Those that are not released should have something obvious that says "don't use me."

But.... That has to be combined with setting each old Rev that was Released to some other state when a new Rev is Released.  Once that is done, dynamic watermarking by state will make it clear that the old Rev drawing is not to be used.

PTC doesn't make it obvious how to do this, and there is nothing OTB to set the old Rev to something other than Released when the new Rev is Released.