Referentieverhaal Unimec Fabrikations AG
Unimec Fabrikations AG digitises administration with a document management system
Aerospace, railways, nuclear technology – anyone manufacturing components for clients in these industries is under close scrutiny. The measurement precision required from a manufacturer is as high as the tolerances are tight. The quality must be flawless – and so must the documentation of the materials used and the production steps taken. Unimec Fabrikations AG meets all of these demands.
Unimec Fabrikations AG
For 20 years, this Swiss company has been producing metal components for demanding clients. Today, Unimec Fabrikations AG employs around 85 people at its production site in Wetzikon, in the canton of Zurich, which spans approximately 6,700 square metres. Jonas Locher, a member of the management team of this family-owned business, sums up the company philosophy in two sentences: “Our orders always involve special requirements. And that’s why we never settle for standard solutions.”
Documentbeheer
Product
70
Werknemers
Werktuigbouwkunde
Industrie
The Industry Challenge
It was in 2014 when Jonas Locher realised that things couldn’t go on as they were; meeting the increasingly high demands of customers was becoming ever more challenging. Not in terms of quality, but in terms of traceability and documentation. Clients from safety-critical industries such as aerospace, nuclear technology, and rail vehicle manufacturing were demanding more and more. “The documentation requirements have increased massively over the past ten years. In some cases, we had to supply half a folder of paper for a single component. Our customers wanted to be able to access documents even years later, and we were spending more and more time searching for and providing them.” The company urgently needed a solution to access documents quickly.
Eliminating the Need for Physical Document Storage
Unimec set out to find such a solution – and found it with adeon ag and the document management system from d.velop. Until then, Unimec had stored everything in paper form: “Invoices, delivery notes, order confirmations, production papers, material certificates, measurement, machine, welding and inspection reports…” Jonas Locher can hardly finish listing them all. The requirement for the DMS was quickly defined: the software should make physical storage of these papers unnecessary; employees should be able to access documents on their computers with just a few clicks. So Jonas Locher sat down with the project team from adeon, led by Andreas Kradolfer. Jonas Locher recalls: “Mr Kradolfer and his team visited us and took a close look at how we worked. At first, we simply knew we needed document management. Then, together, we defined the file structure, which documents needed to be linked, and how they could be stored in a meaningful way so we could retrieve them at the push of a button.”
Unimec processes around 1,000 production orders per month. A single order can include up to five A4 pages, along with various reports – and of course invoices, order confirmations, delivery notes, and more. Until then, an order followed this process: in the work preparation department, orders were entered into the computer; in design, the components were drawn. Once everything was in place, the project staff handed the order over to production. All documents belonging to an order were passed along with the order and the components from station to station. In production, they were reviewed and annotated by the workers with notes, calculations, and signatures. At the end of the production process, the documents were sent back to the office, where they were filed in folders.
Barcodes Link Each Document to Its Order
To reduce the flood of paperwork, adeon proposed a pragmatic approach for the future. Since documents still need to be physically signed to ensure traceability, the simplest solution was to label them with barcodes. This way, each document can be clearly assigned to a specific order – regardless of whether it was created using Unimec’s standard ERP software or a word processing programme. The open architecture of the document management system made it possible to tailor the solution precisely to Unimec’s needs. Step by step, adeon adapted the scope of the new DMS solution to Unimec’s workflows. It integrated seamlessly into established processes – and the ERP system, along with all other software applications already in use at Unimec, could continue to be used without issue. The DMS simply extended the existing systems with a solution that allowed all documents related to an order – no matter which programme they were created in – to be stored centrally. This means employees can now retrieve any document, from order confirmation to delivery note, at the push of a button – even directly within the ERP software itself.
Significant Time Savings, Great Enthusiasm
With the new DMS solution, production staff can continue working as they always have – making notes on production papers, signing them once a job is complete, and passing them on. Once the paper has served its purpose, it is handed over to the office – where it only needs to be scanned. The barcode automatically assigns it to the correct order with the correct label. The paper can then be discarded. There is only one small exception, as Jonas Locher explains: “The nuclear industry. It requires the original documents to be retained. Fair enough! We scan them like all the others – and then send the originals to the customer. That’s the end of it for us; we have the digital copy. And everything else in paper form can now be thrown away.”
Access Any Document at the Push of a Button
The employees at Unimec are thrilled with the new system. They no longer need to file anything in physical production folders – all documents are now stored digitally. This has led to significant time savings for administrative staff. Jonas Locher estimates that each person saves around two hours per week that were previously spent filing and retrieving documents. “The incredible flood of paperwork had become almost unmanageable. Now we’ve got it under control. We know exactly where each document is stored and can access it at any time. And it works flawlessly.”
By mid-2015, the new DMS solution had been fully implemented. One of the nicest compliments the company has received since then came from an important customer in France – a client from the nuclear industry, as Jonas Locher explains.
What makes this even more remarkable is that in the nuclear industry, production documents must be retained for 30 years. With the new document management system, that’s no longer a problem.
A Brilliant System for Managing Measuring Equipment
Unimec was so impressed by the DMS from d.velop that they immediately commissioned adeon for a follow-up project: managing their measuring equipment. Around 4,000 such instruments – from callipers to 3D measuring machines – are in use at the company. Thanks to the new system, which adeon developed specifically for Unimec using barcodes, it is now always possible to trace when and with which measuring instruments a product was manufactured. This traceability is especially important in the aerospace industry, where it is essential to prove the precise calibration of the instruments used in the production of a component. Jonas Locher says: “With the measuring equipment management system, adeon has built us another brilliant solution.”
The document management system is now fully integrated into Unimec’s operations. But Jonas Locher is already thinking ahead. For the future, he envisions transitioning to a paper-light production environment, with over 10,000 orders per year. “We want to continuously expand into other areas to work even more efficiently – for example, by scanning supplier invoices or digitally completing order documents in production.” For him, it’s clear that adeon will be involved again. “Because we’ve seen how customer-focused the company is, how they immerse themselves in our processes and find the right solution for every step. That has completely convinced us.” And he emphasises once again how pleased his company is – both with the collaboration with adeon and with the DMS solution from d.velop.
We hebben kunnen zien hoe klantgericht adeon ag te werk gaat. Ze verdiepen zich in onze problemen en vinden voor elke werkstap de juiste oplossing. Dat bleef ons verbazen.
Jonas Locher
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unimec fabrikations ag
De projectpartner
adeon ag is een geëngageerd team van hooggekwalificeerde en ervaren specialisten die innovatieve oplossingen op het gebied van documentmanagement, elektronische archivering en workflow (Business Process Management, BPM) ontwikkelen en implementeren. Voor duurzame procesoptimalisaties is een competente partner nodig. Het team van adeon ag zet zijn kennis en jarenlange ervaring systematisch in om problemen nauwkeurig te analyseren, diepgaande concepten te definiëren en de implementatie ervan nauwkeurig te coördineren. adeon ag is het competentiecentrum voor ECM-oplossingen van d.velop en is als managing distributor verantwoordelijk voor de markten in Zwitserland en het Vorstendom Liechtenstein.
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