Project Log

Re-engineering the PLM way

Coleridge Shelley

VA TECH WABAG has brought in the desired changes in its engineering design cycles by using Wrench PLM. V Venkatasamy, its Senior Manager, Quality & IT, and Coleridge Shelley, its Manager, Planning, share details about the deployment with Abhinav Singh

Being involved in planning, finance, putting up plants and after-sales service, we at VA TECH WABAG, an EPC (Engineering Procurement Construction) company, were generating more than 1,200 engineering design documents during the design phase of turnkey projects. Our goal was to capitalise on our engineering assets and manage them in a comprehensive manner. Most of these documents pass through multiple internal groups staffed by engineers from several disciplines before being sent to customers for final approval. The customer pays for the documentation, which makes tracking and managing these documents a primary concern for us.

We wanted to have an online system that controlled our engineering designs. Earlier, we had managed our designs independently through a software tool developed in-house, called the Document Control System. Unfortunately, there was no integration with the different departments involved in engineering design. Documents had to be physically (or via e-mail) routed to various users, including customers, and this had to be tracked across project design cycles. The result was a time-consuming, inefficient and error-prone system. For example, a typical drawing generated by the mechanical engineering team would take about 15 days to go through one revision. This meant that information-sharing across departments was non-existent. There was no data integrity, archival was a big challenge, and there were security issues because of the lack of a proper security policy within the Document Control System.

The manual workflow and lack of standardisation across teams was a hurdle. Although ISO procedures were officially put in place, internal departments still used their own heterogeneous processes that had been evolved over the years. Even the document templates in use were not standardised. The team had to work closely with individual departments to collate, identify and zero in on a set of standardised templates. These final templates were incorporated into the product Wrench when it was implemented.

Wrench chosen

We were looking for a PLM solution that could do document management and archival, and had the requisite security parameters. Online project management was a must. After evaluating various PLM products, we found that the online project management capabilities of Wrench were the best of the bunch, and that it could be perfectly integrated with the platforms that we had deployed.

Getting data into Wrench

The implementation, which started in September 2004, concluded with the system going online in January 2005. About five people were involved. All the drawings from the in-house solution, all engineering assets, had to be entered into Wrench. Most of these were scattered across departments. The master data, including document details, employee details, man-hour estimates, structure and project details had to be imported into Wrench from the in-house document management system.

Legacy data such as soft copies of existing files, i.e. drawings and document files, were imported into the Wrench archive using a bulk import programme provided by CADD Solutions (Wrench is a PLM product of CADD Solutions). The first phase focussed on understanding the various business processes that were in use, and creating a more streamlined approach which fulfilled the objective of each process. The second phase addressed the actual implementation of these processes across the enterprise, and revolved around ensuring that Wrench could integrate seamlessly with our in-house developed system, which included Microsoft Project and Primavera.

The team from CADD interacted with each department and put together a cross-functional implementation team staffed by key users from departments and the quality control manager (who also doubled as the IT manager of the company). The CADD Solutions project manager then studied each individual user’s work process to understand the real-time requirements. Based on these interactions, the project manager then ensured that the final workflow procedures that were incorporated into the product not only adhered to ISO 9000 standards, but were also practical and realistic. CADD ensured that this was communicated to and accepted by all users.

RTC to the rescue

Post-implementation, Wrench has given our project managers the freedom to focus on customer management without worrying about the status of those all-important documents, reports and engineering drawings. Once a drawing is made, it is possible to monitor the progress of each drawing in the system as the project progresses. Drawings and the data are available online, and can be shared by many people in real-time. Be it specifications, datasheets, 2D and 3D drawings or task status reports, Wrench automatically tracks, updates and even alerts relevant engineers who are making those drawings. With respect to project status reports and project plans, project managers can now identify potential bottlenecks well ahead of time, thus avoiding time-consuming design changes which in turn could have impacted the project delivery dates and the overall execution quality.

Wrench automatically identifies and escalates alerts in case the designs are running behind schedule, and alerts all concerned parties regarding potentially-critical tasks. Because everything is automated, the entire process has become significantly more reliable. The planning manager can track all the engineering tasks online without interacting personally with individual users. He can also follow up pending tasks online. Users can update the status of pending documents as and when a document is completed. The planning manager and users are automatically intimated about critical and near-critical tasks.

Extending Wrench

We want the Wrench system to be extended beyond our organisation so that our customers can access the project status. We also want to ensure that our project managers can access the PLM solution even from a cyber café in case they are travelling.

abhinav@expresscomputeronline.com