RE: Paperless

Howdy!

     I'm going to demo the "notes" and "drawings" features in Paperless MDCC
for management today, and it is very slick. We are going with PDF files for
the drawings and HTM for the notes, meaning that on the shop floor, we
install Internet Explorer (no access to the Internet) and Acrobat Reader -
both free! We are anticipating that we will need to add a clerical position
to the Engineering group - someone who has had HTML experience. Since we
will have a template to work from, they won't need to know much more HTML
than my eighth-grader is learning this quarter in her Tech class. This will
let us include digital photos where appropriate. We will be using the item
number to access the notes, which means an initial page with the operations
listed as hyper-links to the notes documents for each operation. I think I'm
also going to try to write an SQL (RPG if that doesn't work) program to copy
the notes from the EPDM Item Process to text/HTML files to avoid some
duplication... Stay tuned.
     As for the engineering drawings, we WANT to keep them isolated (our CAD
platform is ProE) until they are approved, then we will "publish" them in
PDF format to the server location that the shop floor machines can access -
we might even make it a PC folder on the AS/400 itself so we don't need
Novell or NT licenses for the shop floor PCs.
     We're very excited about this - at least until someone realizes that we
will need the additional clerical "document librarian" position because it
will be labor-intensive to maintain. Management sees the demo I whipped
together (for one test item and one test MO) in about two hours, and assumes
the total project can be done in four days! Sigh.....

Joan McCready, IS Manager      phone:  636-479-4499
MetalTek International         fax:  636-479-3399
The Carondelet Division        www.metaltekint.com
8600 Commercial Blvd
Pevely, MO  63070                      


-----Original Message-----
From: Peter Vidal [mailto:Peter_Vidal@pall.com] 
Sent: Monday, January 20, 2003 2:34 PM
To: MAPICS ERP System Discussion
Subject: RE: Paperless


"I'm not sure what you are saying concerning the drawing in different
locations or servers."

When we were implementing the product, we faced the fact that the
engineering department had all the drawings classified in different folders
in two different servers.  They also have different naming conventions.
What is the issue here? Well, in MDCC you are able to get drawing
information at JOB ON time, but you need to have a "common" folder where you
can get the drawing you need but not only that.  If you are in the same
situation like we were, you will have different drawing files, one per
revision: item123abc_rev1, 123abc_rev2, etc. and MDCC will pull just the one
that has EXACTLY the same item number configuration (based on what I know).

This is very complex and besides the fact that Paperless has brought a lot
of good stuff, specially  in this last version 6.5.13, handling drawings is
not an easy task.

Peter Vidal
Pall Aeropower Corp. / SR Programmer Analyst
www.pall.com /  Peter_Vidal@Pall.com
727-539-8448, x2414


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