A well-established foot network
For years, Thales employees ran up and down several flights of stairs in pursuit of documents. Since they reuse nearly 80% of their drawings, designers and engineers were constantly in the printroom requesting released drawings and drawing sets.These documents were located in an extensive microfilm archive. Which meant once employees made the trek to the printroom to request documents, they often had to wait while printroom staff found the correct microfilm(s) and printed hard copies. Or make a second trip once the job was done.

 

Archiving woes with 25,000 documents per month
In the Thales printroom, employees produce up to 25,000 large-format documents per month, for designers, manufacturing personnel, subcontractors and customers. With the microfilm archive, it could take several minutes to find and pull each requested drawing —which meant up to a day 's work to reproduce large sets. And staff could misfile the microfilm so it was difficult to find again. Worst of all, the requested documents were not available to anyone else until they were returned to the archive.

 

Treasure hunt for information
Thales' complex flight simulators often made it challenging to isolate the right documents. If something malfunctioned, for example, engineering/manufacturing liaisons headed downstairs to manufacturing to examine the problem. Then they'd run upstairs to look up the associated part number, find the relevant drawing, run to the print room to request a hard copy and wait for it to be produced. Once they had the requested drawing they sometimes discovered they needed others —which meant going through the whole process again. All wasted time they could have used to solve the original problem.

 

Streamlining the document retrieval/production process
The company added Océ Engineering Exec® software to its existing Océ 9800 multifunctional system and Océ 3000 microfilm scanner to increase printroom productivity. Personnel scanned some 140,000 microfilm documents into the Océ Engineering Exec® digital archive, at rates of up to 2,000 a day, so these could be instantly called up and printed on request.The online solution allows Thales employees to quickly access and re-access documents without having to worry about re-filing them. Thereby saving a lot of time and preventing errors.

 

Océ Process Consultancy helps prioritise improvements
Thales was pleased with the solution's initial cost efficiency. But recognised that it was possible to achieve still more. An Océ Consultancy Workshop run by Océ document experts was crucial in helping key employees to identify additional improvements and reach consensus on a prioritised list of document-management related issues across the organisation. As a result, Thales added search, view and print capabilities at critical spots throughout the company —for a powerful document solution that extends beyond the printroom.

 

Viewing documents online for up to 80% time savings
The engineering/manufacturing liaisons comprise one group benefiting from online access to documents. They've cut response time to manufacturing problems and vendor queries by 80%since they can now zip through and find the relevant documents online in minutes. Designers are also benefiting since they have online access to documents 24-7, a real advantage when a customer demands a new product on a tight deadline. Thales estimates that online document access has cut a full week out of the design-manufacturing cycle.