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"e-archive has worked great!
Our paperwork has turned from a storage nightmare to a useful
quality problem solving tool." |
The Customer
Conestoga Wood Specialties Corporation is the cabinet industry’s
leading supplier of wood doors and components. Conestoga operates
seven plants and employs over 1,800 employees.
The Challenge
Conestoga Wood Specialties’ Pennsylvania plant manufactures
over 1,500 different batches of wood components each day. Each
batch includes a single or multi-page document (shop traveler),
printed on legal size paper, which includes the customer name,
job number, description of the wood, process and finishes.
Space is also provided for comments. Each team member must
sign off when his/her task is completed. This document travels
with the job and is forwarded to the production control department
after shipping where all documentation is then stored and maintained
for quality control purposes.
The challenge was to make the information contained on the
documentation available to everyone who needs access without
the time and expense associated with manual sorting, filing,
copies, storage and retrieval.
The Benefits
Time and labor costs have been reduced while customer service
and quality have been improved. The digital images of the
production documentation are instantly available whenever
needed. If an issue should arise, images of the documentation
are used to help determine what might have caused the problem – systems,
process or personnel. If a hard copy is needed, it can be
printed, e-mailed or fa xed immediately; increasing operational
efficiency, saving time and reducing costs. Product quality
has also increased through the use of e-archive. Problems
are quickly and easily traced to the team and member who
produced the product. Production techniques are reviewed
and corrective actions made more expediently. e-archive has
helped Conestoga Wood Specialties provide higher initial
quality and fewer returns while eliminating the need for
manual filing or retrieval.
Space previously used for storing boxes stuffed with shop
travelers is no longer needed. Manufacturing space previously
used for paper storage has been reclaimed. Data security and
back-up have also been addressed.
The Solution
Fraser Advanced Information Systems developed a solution to
the challenge combining a Canon scanner with Fraser’s
e-archive automated scanning software. The process developed
by Fraser, with the assistance of Conestoga’s technical
staff, was to place a bar coded batch number on the documents
when they are printed by their mainframe (IBM AS/400) manufacturing
software (MAPICS). Completed documentation is scanned onto
a local PC’s hard drive using a Canon scanner. After
scanning, e-archive automatically removes blank pages, cleans
the images (straighten, cropped, despeckel) and indexes the
documents for on-line storage and retrieval. e-archive’s
automated indexing process reads the bar code on each page,
performs a database lookup to the mainframe, links the database
data to the images and files a digital copy of the documentation
for retrieval. Typical index information includes: customer
number, customer name, work order number, production date,
etc. Document cleanup, indexing and filing process is completely
automated. Images of the shop travelers are then maintained
on-line for access by various individual within the Production
Department. Share the knowledge, not the paper Copying, distributing,
filing and storing paper is expensive. Fraser has the knowledge
and experience to automate your paper systems. We can show
you how to take your existing paper documents and convert
them to electronic images. Once the documents are in electronic
format, we can design and implement automatic work flows
that automate delivery of the documents to people who need
them. Call us or visit our web site for more information.
See how your organization can increase efficiency, lower
costs and improve document security by using Fraser to automate
your paper systems.
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