Advanced Solutions, an Autodesk Platinum Partner and Authorized Training Center (ATC), has partnered with Kohrs Lonnemann Heil (KLH) Engineers, PSC, on an internal process improvement through the Advanced Solutions Workflow Simulation service.
Kohrs Lonnemann Heil (KLH) Engineers, PSC, is a forward thinking firm, striving to improve quality through process innovation and the adoption of technology. They are constantly looking at ways to automate "busy" work, so their engineers can focus on being engineers. Executive Director of Engineering, Joseph Kohrs, PE, said, "We're not afraid to take chances with the technology." He went on to say, "We don't want to be the guy who waits for the technology to mature before we utilize it. We feel that is a failed response in terms of being innovative and staying ahead of the competition."
Advanced Solutions approached KLH Engineering to be a Workflow Simulation partner, just as the KLH team was looking to examine their RFI and submittals process to validate weak points and identify opportunities for improvement. Joseph explained, "We were more than willing to open up our doors, our thought process, and our systems flow, so they could do a deeper dive and understand what we were doing right and what we were doing wrong within our systems and help us."
Industrial engineers from Advanced Solutions embarked on an intense study of the RFI and construction submittal process by interviewing employees throughout KLH. They gathered measureable data, evaluated current strategies, and looked into all aspects of the construction submittal process.
Advanced Solutions was able to model the existing submittal process, validate current workflows, identify inefficiencies, explore alternatives, and simulate several new workflows for KLH to evaluate. Upon completion, they were able to present KLH with several automation options to evaluate during the decision-making process. The assessment allowed KLH to see the simulated outcome of each process improvement, instead of making large capital expenditures upfront on changes that may or may not work. KLH could clearly evaluate a successful process improvement against one destined to fail.
Once KLH embarked on the RFI and submittal assessment, Joseph says, "We knew that we were going to save time and money with a change to the process." "What Advanced Solutions was able to give us was a forecast of those potential savings." Advanced Solutions was able to show a decrease of 40% in the average number of submittal and RFI process steps, provide a 48% decrease in administrative overhead, and confirm required workflow changes between the receipt of the RFI and processing by the engineer to meet their targeted turnaround time.
Furthermore, before implementing the changes suggested through the Workflow Simulation assessment, KLH experienced a 50% failure rate in meeting its targeted turnaround time. After 2 ½ weeks of implementation, having processed 190 units from receipt to completion, KLH was able to confirm an average reduction in turnaround time of 61%, showing drastic improvements in efficiency.
KLH sees the use of the Workflow Simulation services as an investment in their company. They were able to simulate, validate, and even avoid unintended consequences by modeling their existing workflow process. Gaining knowledge about internal processes is an important part of continued improvement and business growth.
Advanced Solutions is proud to have developed a lasting partnership with KLH. Joseph mentioned, "They have always been a partner of ours." He went on to say, "Whether they are providing us new services, such as the Workflow Simulation or Revit health checks to help audit our existing design process within Revit, we will continue to gain great information from this long partnership."
To read the full case study, visithttp://www.advancedsolutions.com/services/casestudies.aspx.
