Does Digitizing
Engineering Files Make Sense?
This company saved $33,000 in Annual Retrieval Cost.
Manufacturing businesses retain a wealth of knowledge in their engineering
flat files. While newer
drawings are created on AutoCAD, ProEngineer and other off-the-shelf softwares,
engineerings functions
still need to draw upon drawings created in earlier softwares or in many
cases hard copy paper or mylar
drawings.
Significant time and cost is expended in locating a specific
drawing, copying it, and making it available to
either your vendor or clients.
This is what a manufacturing business located in Pennsylvania discovered.
Their engineers realized that
every week they were getting 50 - 60 drawing requests from their customer or
vendors. An engineer would
walk to the drawing files, search for the drawing, scan it into their system
so that they could then share the
scanned image with their client.
The customer very quickly recognized the large savings potential of digitizing
all drawings. All 3000
drawings were scanned using high speed scanners. Drawings were indexed based
on search criteria
identified by the engineers creating "Smart" drawings. In the process
the manufacturing operation realized
an annual savings of $33,000.00 in annual retrieval cost.
