Electronic Document Management
Case Studies:
Xomox ships on time.
The Xomox Corporation, a division of Emerson Electric, is a global manufacturer of industrial valves and valve actuators. Every valve is manufactured and assembled starting with a raw casting that comes from one of several foundries that Xomox uses as suppliers.
Since the precision valves that they manufacture may be used in 'mission critical' applications, they must provide documentation (Certifications) to their customers proving that the castings conform to rigid specifications. Since the original Certifications come from the suppliers when they ship the castings to Xomox, not only does Xomox have to manufacture the valves, but they must manage all the associated paperwork and be able to find it promptly when the valves are ready to ship. The production office became overburdened by the sheer volume of paper documents, to the point that Xomox could not always ship on time, even when the product was ready to go.
"Certs", as the Certifications are called, could not always be found. Then the question became - Did we ever receive the original paperwork from the foundry? Did we misfile the Certs?. Did we lose them? Not only do they have to contend with just the Certifications, but in many cases there are associated Test Reports that must also be filed and be available upon demand.
It didn't take many missed shipments to motivate Xomox to want a better document management system. docuVision responded to their need with Keyfile. The project team at Xomox selected Keyfile over a host of strong respondents to their request for proposal, principally because of the ease of use of Keyfile. Jim Milam and Terry Wright of docuVision took the time to study the problem, develop a solution, and demonstrate it to Senior Management to get the order. Since Keyfile is easily customized, docuVision was the only vendor to actually show an effective solution to the problem.
For the implementation, Keyfile was "front ended" by an Access database. Now Certifications and Test Reports are stored in Keyfile file folders in electronic file cabinets. Access to the paper documents is instantaneous. When product is ready to ship, the Cert documents are printed or faxed directly from the Keyfile Document Management System. And, the ease of use of the system permits production workers, not schooled in computer systems, to find the Certs when they are needed.