> Federal, State and Local Government | > Power Generation & Distribution | > Telecommunications | > Manufacturing

Manufacturing

Shop floor distribution - automated blueprint crib
In this application a company who uses blueprint cribs to distribute drawings, specifications and other documentation to the shop floor, can replace these with a series of walk-up view and print stations. This application is widely in use at a number of aerospace and automotive component manufacturers throughout the United States.

The Automated Blueprint Crib (ABC) system allows for aperture cards and paper documentation to be converted to electronic raster documents, which are managed in a central vault. Multiple sites around the world can access this vault through walk-up stations, eliminating the high cost of aperture card handling, distributing and printing.

There are many technologies that are being used to organize engineering data, purchased part information and resource planning information. These technologies include Product Data Management (PDM), Component Supplier Management (CSM), Electronic Document Management (EDM) and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems. Each of these systems strives to collect and control the data associated with their areas of design and manufacturing processes. In each case, the more information that these systems have under their control, the more effective these systems can be. However, this also introduces the problem that sharing information between these systems often requires costly, complex and custom interfaces to be developed.

PROMERGENT offers a novel approach to the business problem of integrating multiple technologies. Our approach focuses on a specific business process and automates that process using the EDEN Product Suite. Rather than capturing business data from other systems, EDEN uses intelligent forms to call these other systems and present the data required in making a business decision. These intelligent forms use built-in integration capabilities to access whichever system is needed to support a decision regarding the business process. In addition, these intelligent forms may change the look and feel of the next form with each decision made.

An example of this is the application of a sales order process across an engineered-to-order product company. A Sales Order is usually a paper form that moves between individual people, who in turn use a variety of different support systems. These include quotation systems, customer information systems to determine similar product ordering history, PDM for design of new configurations, CSM for determining available purchased parts, EDM for manufacturing documents and ERP for financial and order fulfillment.

Our solution allows you to follow the actual sales order process and calls the various systems, previously mentioned, to display the applicable information as needed. This approach provides rapid return on investment through business process automation, while still preserving data in the other enabling systems.

Document distribution to remote plants
Within most companies it is common practice to produce products throughout the world. While this can reduce labor, shipping and support costs, it presents the problem of maintaining consistent quality across all product lines at all locations. PROMERGENT has assisted a number of companies in solving this problem by providing an EDM system that allows for the capture and distribution of all forms of documents, as well as the automatic update of these documents at different sites around the world. Each location can manage their own document vault, while still having key documents automatically updated. This provides the best of both worlds -- reliability with dedicated servers, combined with automatic assurance of the latest information being used.

This application is currently in use at many different types of manufacturing customers including consumer products, engineered-to-order products, automotive components and aerospace manufacturers. All forms of documentation are being automatically distributed including change order forms, CAD drawings, specifications, standard operating procedures and quality assurance records.