Q: I have a manufacturing unit and have an ISO certification for over a year.

Now though the certification has helped us to improve our operations and reduce inefficiencies we are now facing a problem of a different kind. Over time our processes have changed from time to time and it is very tedious to maintain the versions of the ISO documents. Also our offices are spread over multiple locations. The different versions of the documents have to be manually taken from unit to unit and approvals are then taken. We inherently believe that there should be a Technology solution to help us reduce the effort we spend in this process. Need guidance on the different possibilities possible and what it would mean in terms of time and money.

Thanks!

A: This is a classic example of problems faced by manufacturing industry where all the systems and processes have been put into place, but all the tracking, and monitoring is being done manually. The problem sited here just talks about the versions of process documents but generally it is not limited only to process documents. The other problems, which are typical for manufacturing companies, are keeping these documents for ready access, monitoring workflow, etc.

We'll restrict the scope of this answer to your question i.e. for maintaining the versions of documents and have online approvals from different people and then publishing these documents on the intranet (it could even be internet too) The other problems which we mentioned in the paragraph above have been dealt with partially in the previous issue of businessgyan.

This kind of situation can be handled by using "Content Management" Tools. There are plenty of them in the market, e.g. Vinette, Documentum, Infobase, Team Site, C-Miner etc. The first two (Vinette and Documentum) are very high end products. These provide not only the Management of the documents but also can integrate your workflow to you web server. These are typical for big enterprises, which want to have their workflow, and SCM all added to a B2B2C type solution. The license and customization cost of these product ranges from $0.5 Mn - $1.0 Mn. There are products which can be classified as Middle end Products (like Infobase and Team site), Which gives good balance of customization and features available with them and ranges between $75,000-$250,000.

Then there are low range products (like C-Miner), which are good for small and medium sized industries (SMEs). These products typically take care of you documents and their versions, online approval from different people etc. These products are also customizable and can also be integrated with Internet and Intranet (as per requirement). These products generally cost between $4,000-$10,000.

We would also like to mention here that when you are brainstorming on the issue of buying a product, you should also look into the costs of getting such application made for you. Generally custom-built applications cost you more than the off-the-shelf product, but sometimes even the lowest-end (hence cheapest too) product has lot many features which you may not want. The custom built application comes handy in this situation as you get exactly what you need and it might cost you lesser than the lowest-end product available.

This section has been answered by a panel of experts from eMIDS Technologies Pvt. Ltd.

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Issue BG04 July01

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