Document Dilemmas
April 2004
Pamela Malinoski, Contributing Writer

When it comes to implementing a paperless system, manufacturers are finding that smaller, self-contained projects are more successful than company-wide initiatives.

The concept of the paperless office was born at the beginning of the computer age. The idea that all documents could move electronically and seamlessly within and between organizations seemed a logical expected outcome of computerization. Today, nearly a quarter century later, few, if any, organizations have truly achieved a paperless office. Why?

Many organizations have not made a full-fledged attempt at achieving a paperless system. Michael J.D. Sutton, a consultant specializing in knowledge and document management, believes that a lack of understanding of the value of document management often leaves such initiatives off the top priority list.

"Not enough senior executives understand the implications of poor document management," Sutton says. "I had one executive tell me if he wants a document, he flags it and has his staff find it. I can accept that on an exception basis, but we've never had to deal with the volume of information we have today. For example, the average corporate employee receives 20 to 50 e-mails a day. That may take two hours just to read, not to mention taking appropriate actions." Combine the vast quantity of e-mail with all the other corporate documents that exist and document management becomes a significant challenge.

Sutton estimates that a lost word processing document costs a company roughly $45,000, but because proper return-on-investment is not assigned to lost documents, it is difficult for companies to justify the cost and resources to implement a document management system.

Those manufacturing executives who have made the effort at a paperless system have discovered numerous challenges including inconsistent formats, paper-based requirements of suppliers and customers, and lack of participation by employees. As a result, most widespread document management initiatives have failed to achieve their original goals.

"In general, manufacturers are still doing a lot manually," says Jim Murphy, senior analyst at AMR Research. "They may be working with external constituencies who still require paper, and formats are not always consistent. Often, manufacturers do not have much electronic capability on the shop floor, which means paper forms are still required for things like quality checks. I don't think many companies are doing a fully paperless system. Instead, many start with specific, insular processes such as invoicing or handling purchase orders. Automating those processes often lead to big benefits."

Detroit Diesel Corp., a subsidiary of DaimlerChrysler AG, has found one process that has truly benefited from a document management system. Detroit Diesel designs, manufactures, and services heavy-duty diesel and alternative fuel engines and serves the marine, military, construction, industrial, generator-set, mining, trucking, and automotive markets.

The company services its customers through a worldwide network of more than 2,700 authorized distributor and dealer locations. About a dozen employees maintain approximately 200,000 pages of content and more than 36,000 graphic image files. This department is responsible for maintaining all of the engine service manuals and related supporting documentation, including application and installation manuals, troubleshooting guides, and special publications.

When it was time to revamp its document management system, Detroit Diesel selected Progressive Information Technologies' Vasont Systems, a cross-media publishing system for content management. Currently, the system is set up so that employees work on publications in a secure work-in-progress area. Once the publication is validated and completed, it is moved to a publication-ready area for sharing and possible auditing.

The solution: "We found the system to be user friendly," says Anthony Dell'Eva, database administrator at Detroit Diesel. "What used to take eight hours now takes two - that's a significant savings in labor rates alone." In the future, Dell'Eva expects that other employees within the company will be able to view documents online to analyze engine problems or further company-wide communications.

Like Detroit Diesel, Chempump, a leading manufacturer of seal less, leak proof pumps found that document management efforts would generate a significant return in one specific area - its quoting and application processes. A Kaizen event illustrated to the management that these processes were inefficient and error-prone. Visibility of quoting data and activity was extremely low due to the lack of a central repository and easy desktop access for quote information. Instead, quote information was spread across multiple spreadsheets in both hard copy and network-based filing systems, requiring manual retrieval processes that rendered the data difficult and time-consuming to access and categorize.

Chempump's quoting and application engineering problems were most apparent in quoting the company's two key product lines. Because of inherent technical complexities, the pumps had been quoted using a lengthy, manual application engineering process. The engineers used several different software tools, including desktop spreadsheet programs, for configuring products and calculating quotation prices. As a result, quotation lead-times were long, inefficient and costly in terms of labor and resources required. Quotation presentations were inconsistent since there was no standardized tool and format. Management information was laborious and time consuming to compile, inconsistent in content and dependent on a manually maintained quotation log.

Chempump selected BigMachines Lean Front-EndSM Solution, a provider of software solutions for streamlining the selling of complex products. By applying lean thinking in conjunction with the software solution, Chempump has reduced the application engineering and quote generation time by 50 percent to 70 percent since implementation.

"We have achieved significant time and cost reductions, using fewer resources and far fewer process steps," says Tom Conroy, general manager. "We now rely on a standardized quoting tool, resulting in more accurate and consistent quotes, greater sales efficiency and better follow-up to convert quotes to orders. In addition, the system's reporting capabilities will help us drive productivity and forecasting even further."

In helping his clients implement electronic document management systems, Sutton has created a set of guiding principles to increase the chances of success, whether the effort is narrow or broad in scope. "A strategy for document and records management should be founded upon a set of guiding principles associated with data management, recordkeeping, and long-term preservation," he explains. First, document management systems must be simple. "Corporate users have a very short attention span," Sutton says. "Moving an enterprise from a chaotic and uncontrolled use of a document management system to adoption and endorsement of a stable one is an incremental process that will generally take three or more years."

Limiting profile fields to five and presenting unambiguous, mutually exclusive options to complete the fields are other ways to keep things simple. Manufacturers must invest in a solid online thesaurus or create a strict application of controlled vocabulary rules to ensure that the system can accurately retrieve filed documents.

Executives must remember that limiting access control to documents is expensive and time consuming. "Access control should be broader and more inclusive, than narrower and more exclusive," Sutton suggests. "Design access control for broad use by means of a small number of groups, and manage the few exceptions by limited admission to a special group."

Discipline and rigor must be central to a deployment effort as well. According to Sutton, those organizations who have been most successful are the ones that have demonstrated strict rules, controlled vocabularies and enforced compliance. "Accountants would never be allowed to leave out a deduction or journal entry because they were too lazy or busy to put it into the general ledger," Sutton says. "Yet, we permit employees to lose and improperly file information without appropriate disciplinary action."

Authors must be accountable for ensuring their documents are properly retained. "Each document is a sharable, corporate information asset," Sutton explains. "It is worth money, and will cost the company if it is lost or misfiled. Users create documents so they can be read, reviewed, commented upon and approved. If users place documents on their personal drives, no one else has any potential way of finding those documents."

Although Sutton advises that best practices need to be identified, developed, deployed, re-enforced, he reminds clients that the politics of end users often override these best practices. "Many end users must experience failure at least once before they will realize the benefit of using document and records management," he says.

By carefully considering the scope of a document management system before implementation and following some basic guiding principles during implementation, manufacturers can significantly increase their chances of a success.