CIMdata PLM Industry Summary Online Archive
26 March 2008
Implementation Investments
Fluid Components International Reduces Time to Market for Quality Instrumentation with Adept Document Management
Fluid Components International LLC (FCI) replaced its electronic flat file system with Adept document management software from Synergis Software to get its engineering and business documentation under control so that it could bring its products to market faster.
“One of our key challenges is reducing the time to market for new products,” affirmed Eric Wible, Director of Engineering at FCI. “Our ability to design, develop and produce quality instrumentation is a key factor to growth in our current markets as well as expanding into new markets. This process is directly tied to our internal capability to control and easily find our intellectual property and proprietary information, which is primarily in the form of engineering documentation.”
Karyn Dawes, Document Management Supervisor at FCI, headed up the evaluation process. Because FCI’s Aerospace Division had standardized on SolidWorks design software and its Industrial Division was migrating to SolidWorks from AutoCAD, compatibility with both platforms was at the top of her well-thought-out criterion. Dawes’ criterion included proven success at other ISO approved companies as well as a powerful database, document security, searching, viewing, and reporting capabilities. Of course, being user friendly and affordable was high on the list. Only Adept, one of the SolidWorks Gold PDM Partners products, met all the criteria.
Prior to implementation, Dawes attended the Administrator Training course at Synergis’ headquarters and later scheduled nearly 100 others to be trained in two days. “Initially, we brought 20 years of data and more than 50,000 records into Adept. What I learned from that effort is that it’s better to implement a new system in stages and bring in only clean electronic data first,” advised Dawes.
FCI uses Adept in Engineering and other departments to manage product design information including drawings, parts lists, operation sheets as well as general business and ISO-certified marketing documents. “Adept’s powerful capabilities can benefit virtually every department,” concluded Wible.
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