This company does light assembly in the automobile industry.
Configuration control was handled by a legacy application that provided totally inadequate job tickets. A job ticket or work order is a printout that provides inventory and assembly information to an assembler to assure proper assembly of a product from the right parts.
First, we automated the import of configuration data from the legacy system. Then we added inventory and assembly data fields appropriate to typical work flows. This allowed the assembler to quickly check off the activities needed to complete the assembly. At the end of each day the job tickets were quickly fed back into the system so that the next time the assembly was needed the job ticket could provide the assembler with all the instructions needed.
This process captured many thousands of data points into the system that had previously been held as tribal knowledge. If a key employee had left the company before this project all that knowledge would have been lost resulting in thousands of dollars in wasted labor and material.
Accuracy improved and waste was reduced significantly but the most important benefit was entirely unanticipated. This was the ability to make changes to procedures directly in the database. Previously, when customers made changes management had to re-train assemblers, write memos and inspect final product to ensure that changes were implemented. With the new system they didn't have to train assemblers on the new revision. Each new revision was clearly marked on the job ticket the next time the order was printed and the assembler simply followed the instructions provided. Questions were directed to the engineer that wrote the revision.
Total hours: 65
This client has insisted that the application paid for itself during the first full week.