Affordable Web-based Design Control System

 

In most industries, it is critical that manufacturers control their design processes to assure the visibility and traceability of all information and decisions.  This is important both for the efficiency of the product development process itself, as well as the ability for the manufacturer to satisfy industry regulatory requirements.

Such design control can be viewed as having both a content loop — the evolution of data that describes the design, and a process loop — defining in what order activities are conducted and capturing all decision points when the content is formally approved.  The process loop is captured and controlled using I-PROCESS.

For most manufacturers, especially those of small to medium size, I-PROCESS will fully address the desired process improvements and compliance with industry regulations.  Large companies with an existing, extensive IT infrastructure can connect I-PROCESS with existing enterprise applications, such as enterprise resource planning (ERP), supply chain management (SCM), and customer relationship management (CRM) systems. Interchance with enterprise-level product data management (PDM) is also an option.

Testimonial Comments from I-PROCESS Customers

Training for the I-PROCESS admin functions took less than a day. Training for end users takes a few hours at most.

With I-PROCESS we're able to model our processes ourselves without any programming or database knowledge, all through a simple web interface.

The ability for I-PROCESS to extract our parts and BOM information directly from our existing databases greatly simplified the implementation and requires no additional maintenance to keep the information up to date.

While I-PROCESS is significantly less expensive than alternatives we looked at, the real savings come with the independence we now have to configure the software quickly and easily with our own staff.

- L. Charles Force II, Plant Manager, Brazeway Mexico Facility, Brazeway Inc.

Without any programming, we defined our bid package process, installed and configured I-PROCESS, and had the solution up-and-running in 5 days!

The elegant simplicity of I-PROCESS has been key to the rapid and eager user acceptance of our process automation project.

- Rodney Pack, IT Specialist, Vermax Inc.

 

Using I-PROCESS, project managers and administrators are provided a functional set of predefined process templates that, taken together can be thought of as a mosaic of the development process.  These templates can be directly edited in a web browser to fully conform to company-specific terminology, staffing and best practices.

 

Process stages for an Engineering Change Order, with progress bars indicating completion status.

Each stage in the process can be either an ‘action’ (e.g. create, implement) or ‘approval’ step.  It is of course critical that the design control system automatically capture the fact that certain actions were conducted and that certain individuals approved the action and its related data content.  Likewise, managers and executives can engage in the process and stay on top of progress conveniently from their web browser.

 

Task status within the Board Review and Implement stages of the ECO process.

 

In general, each action step can have connected with it certain data content in the form of ‘related’ and ‘affected’ documents.  Affected documents represent elements of the design itself (e.g. released drawings or 3D models) that are impacted or altered by the action.  Related documents capture all supporting materials such as specifications, cost estimates, simulation models, test results, and inspection procedures.  Any of these documents can of course be directly launched in their native application by simply clicking on the file name.

 

Design Content: Related Documents that retain design and ECO details.

Of key importance to manufacturers is that I-PROCESS:

The functionality and flexibility of the I-PROCESS product extends beyond just the initial implementation and allows active processes to evolve during project execution to fully capture realities of the ‘as-designed’, 'as-built' and 'as-processed' product.

Powerful and flexible reporting is available by integrating Microsoft Excel and its ODBC linkages. A couple of sample reports follow:

For additional information you can download and print the one-page brochure, or the white paper.

Packaging & Pricing
I-PROCESS is provided on a server-license basis without limits on the number of users that can access the system from a given server.  All users (project managers, administrators, end users) require only a standard web browser to access the full capabilities of the system. Typical initial I-PROCESS implementations require approximately 2 - 3 days of services, and can have a license cost of approximately $1,000 per user.  Initial results come within weeks, and the return-on-investment can usually be measured in months. Contact Paul Stevens at 503.223.9152, to learn about the affordable pricing and return-on-investment with I-PROCESS.