Document and Part Number Management in manufacturing processes
Duplicate information will disappear from your life for good.
Engineering-related industries, such as aerospace, marine or renewable energy, work with thousands of different parts and components in their manufacturing processes. Each of those parts has a “Part Number” that uniquely identifies it within each structure or component.
Just to give an example: a passenger aircraft is made up of more than four million different parts!
Each of these parts has a multitude of technical documents associated with it, from work instructions to technical specifications or drawings.
Each supplier manufactures only some of the parts
Fortunately, manufacturing work is split among hundreds of suppliers. Each one makes one or several components, often subcontracting the manufacture of some parts to other suppliers in turn, which builds a large manufacturing tree.
Companies collect all the manufacturer information related to these Part Numbers in Excel, and organise the documents associated with each part using folders. On top of managing the documentation for what they manufacture themselves, in order to organise work with their suppliers they typically keep a shared folder with each supplier.
For this type of company, having the current documentation at hand is essential to get the job done properly.
Beyond current documentation, security and permissions are essential too. Although it may look as simple as granting or denying access to an Excel file or a shared folder, it gets complicated as soon as you are working with large numbers of parts and suppliers.
The problems of distributing technical documentation through shared folders
Handling this whole situation with basic office tools gives rise to a long list of problems.
To begin with, managing documentation with Excel and folders can not only cause the loss of key information, it also creates duplicate documents.
The same document may be needed by several suppliers, which means duplicating it in every shared folder.
Secondly, engineering documentation changes constantly and keeping documentation current can become a real challenge, because whenever there is a change, the document has to be updated in every folder where a duplicate exists.
Finally, the loss of security and of control over who made which changes to each document can even lead to legal problems.
Using a document management system
All of this can be solved easily with Docuo.
Not only will you have your information and documentation organised and grouped by type (drawings, WM, specifications, etc.), you will also forget about duplicates for good, because there will be a single document, and that is the one that appears in the folders of all the different suppliers.
Revisions to the documentation of a Part Number only have to be uploaded once, and you do not have to notify your suppliers: the tool does it automatically.
In addition, when you give a supplier permission to see a Part Number, they will automatically be able to see everything they need in order to manufacture that component, even if that information sits “above” or “below” it in the structure.
All of this thanks to the structure management and the association between documents and part numbers that we have in Docuo, designed specifically for this problem.
Thanks to these permissions, as an administrator you will also be able to see which documentation is obsolete and which is current, visually and at a glance, using our Kanban boards, while for suppliers you have the option of letting them see only what is current.
You can also keep track of everything that happens to your documents at a glance: who made changes and when. On top of that, our processes comply with the regulatory requirements of ICAO, EASA, JAA and FAA, among others, offering companies an ideal workspace for security compliance in their documentation processes, with component traceability by part number.
As you can see, at Docuo we adapt 100% to your problem. Contact us to find out everything we can do for you.