Deep Thoughts with Richard Schoen

 Almost twenty years after the paperless office concept was born, many companies are still mired in printed paperwork. Orders and Invoices come in via mail and fax. Invoices, Statements, Bills of Lading, CAD Drawings and other documents are still printed and manually assembled in many cases to create shop floor paperwork and shipping documents. These processes still generate paper, but there are ways to gain tangible Return On Investment (ROI) from automating the assembly and processing of key business documents.

 Let’s look at a common scenario where automating the assembly and distribution of documents can streamline paper flow and greatly reduce manual labor and errors when assembling paperwork for the shop floor..

 Manufacturing Customer X has to generate shop floor paperwork to be sent to the shop floor with every custom order being processed for the day. Employees then manually mark up the documents and scan the completed paperwork. The customer doesn’t feel the environment is conducive to touch screen terminals, so they currently still generate paperwork. Since each order requires a generated system report, paired with a copy of an electronic CAD drawing and work instructions, the process is very laborious. Each night the system documents are printed. At 5 am each morning, someone from engineering picks up the stack of documents and manually prints the CAD drawing to go with each order. Then another clerical person prints the appropriate machine instruction documents and staples the entire paperwork package together. Each day there are over 1000 job packets generated based on the job scheduling system, so repeating this process manually wastes at least 9 hours per day since there are three people involved in the paperwork assembly process. Since the highly paid engineer holds the key to the CAD drawings, they are directly involved in the print and assembly process rather than spending their valuable time working on CAD drawings.

 Even though Customer X doesn’t want to go entirely paperless with their paperwork generation process, they can easily reduce or eliminate the 9 hours per day being spent manually assembling paperwork. Imagine a scenario where each night the 1000 system documents are generated in the evening. As soon as each system document is generated it identifies which CAD drawings need to be assembled and printed with the system document. Then the work instruction documents are called in and printed in sequence. Finally each document is auto-stapled by the printer so nobody needs to be involved in the assembly process unless the printer jams, runs out of paper or toner.

 This story is true however the customer names have been removed to protect the innocent. If you think your company could benefit from automated document assembly and automation technology, contact the experts at RJS to help you capture, manage, secure and distribute your important business documents