Take ownership of the tool . . .

    "For a successful roll-out, it's paramount that your users are involved, not only with input in the customization, but in offering input to deployment. Finally, take ownership of the tool — if you feel you own it, you will make it the best possible tool in managing your documents."

    Jon E. Nicholson II
    Configuration Manager
    Raytheon Technical Services Co. LLC

Out in the high desert of Ft. Irwin, California, the U.S. Army hones their combative skills with mission training and feedback in a simulated war environment. This "lesson-learned" training is essential in providing soldiers with the skills necessary to maintain and improve their military readiness, before their boots hit the ground.

Headquartered in Reston, VA, Raytheon Technical Services Company (RTSC) operates in 50 states, 32 countries, and seven continents. RTSC, Range Technical Services, a Department of Defense (DoD) government contractor at Fort Irwin, California, is using AutoEDMS to manage the 11,000+ library of drawings that are necessary to operate and maintain this war-fighting training simulation system, which supports over 2,000 players, 10 times a year.

As the nation's premier operator of DoD ranges and provider of technical support services to the Federal Aviation Administration, RTSC provides technical, scientific, and professional services for defense, federal, and commercial customers worldwide.

The Business Need

What initially started as project to provide a solution for version control of Raytheon's 11,000+ library of drawings for eight Engineering and Configuration Management users and a single database, ended up growing to support just under 30 users, and four distinct databases.

"Prior to implementing AutoEDMS, the check-out, revision control, and the manual version release procedures were extremely inefficient by comparison," recounted Jon Nicholson, RTSC-NTC-IS Configuration Manager for Raytheon, who was directly involved in the AutoEDMS implementation.

Continuing, Nicholson explained, "Our databases are managing documentation developed in all Microsoft Office applications, as well as Visio and AutoCAD. Each database has unique Forms and workflow processes created with specific regard to the management of the document content control. The four databases provide additional management of library System Publications, administrative SOPs and exhibits, and business correspondence and project tracking."

"Future plans include further licensing deployment across this site, as well as further customization of the drawing database capabilities to include an automated drawing tree reporting function —leveraging captured Next Assembly data," says Nicholson.

Before AutoEDMS

"Prior to the implementation of AutoEDMS," notes Nicholson, "our library documentation content maintenance employed a labor-intensive manual directory and file management approach, coupled with a FoxPro migrated Microsoft Access database version control data capture application. We had no direct-correlation of management data and documents."

"Version control was also a manually labor-intensive process," describes Nicholson. "While documents could easily be retrieved through the server-based directory structure to support efficiency for our Engineering efforts, the back-end Configuration Management efforts were excessively cumbersome in validating documentation being requested for release into our baseline. We spent many extra hours, per individual drawing sheet, validating revision data inclusion, and confirming data content was sourced from an appropriate baseline, while continually monitoring multiple sheet revision projects."

Key Benefits

"AutoEDMS' customizable environment allows us to marry document-specific maintenance data with its associated document," says Nicholson. "We have a very specific contract compliance vision managing DoD technical system documentation. Our customer has confidence in library maintenance of our documentation management approach, because of the customization allowing our operation to satisfy their requirements regarding control and reporting."

ROI Achievements

"As an estimate," explains Nicholson, "AutoEDMS has improved our configuration and library maintenance efficiency in decreasing our labor by about 50% in just managing drawings library content through process improvements afforded through a customized AutoEDMS database. And . . . remember, there are also dollars associated with a Customer's confidence in your document management efforts."

Words of Advice

"Ensure a clear game plan in customization requirements, implementing, and deploying a system," advises Nicholson. "Most importantly, get your users' buy-in! For a successful roll-out, it's paramount that your users are involved, not only with input in the customization, but in offering input to deployment. Finally, take ownership of the tool — if you feel you own it, you will make it the best possible tool in managing your documents."

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