Document and Part Number Management in manufacturing processes

The duplicate information will disappear forever from your life.

Engineering-related industries, such as aerospace, marine and renewable energy, work with thousands of different parts and components in their manufacturing processes. Each of these parts has a “Part Number” that uniquely identifies it in each structure or component.

Just to give an example: An airliner is made of more than four million different parts!

Each of these parts has a multitude of technical documents associated with it, from work instructions to technical specifications or drawings.

Fortunately, the manufacturing work is divided among hundreds of suppliers. Each one manufactures one or several components, often subcontracting the manufacture of some parts to other suppliers, thus forming a large manufacturing tree.

The companies collect all the manufacturer’s information related to these Part Numbers in Excel, and organize the documents associated with each part by means of folders. In addition to managing the documentation of what they manufacture, to organize the work with their suppliers, they typically have a shared folder with each supplier.

For these types of companies, having the documentation in place is essential to get the job done right.

In addition to current documentation, security and permissions are also essential, which, although it may seem as simple as whether or not to give access to an Excel or shared folder, becomes more complicated when you are working with large numbers of parts and suppliers.

This whole situation gives rise to numerous problems. Firstly, the collection of documentation in Excel and folders can not only lead to loss of key information, but also to duplicate documents, as the same document may be needed for several suppliers, and have to be duplicated in all the corresponding folders.

Secondly, engineering documentation is constantly changing and keeping the documentation current can become a real challenge, as if there has been a change, the document has to be updated in every folder where there is a duplicate.

Finally, the loss of security and control to see who has made changes to each document can even cause legal problems.

All this problem can be solved in a simple way with Docuo.

Not only you will have the information and documentation organized and grouped by type (drawings, WM, specifications, etc.), but you will also forget about duplicates forever, since you will only have one document that will be the one that goes in all the folders of the different suppliers. In this way, the revisions of a Part Number will only have to be applied once and you will not have to notify them or your team, since the tool does it automatically.

In addition, when you give a supplier permission to see a Part Number, they will automatically be able to see everything they need to manufacture that component, even if it is information that is “above” or “below” in the structure.

All this thanks to the structure management and the association between documents and part numbers that we have in Docuo, designed especially for this problem.

Thanks to these permissions, you will also be able to see as an administrator the documentation that is obsolete and current in a visual and quick way thanks to our Kanban boards, while, for suppliers, you have the option to allow them to see only the one that is current.

You can also have under control everything that happens with your documents: who has made changes, at what time they were made, etc. In addition, our processes comply with the regulations required by the ICAO, EASA, JAA and FAA, among others, thus offering companies an ideal workspace for the security compliance of their documentation processes, with traceability of components by part number.

As you can see, at Docuo we adapt 100% to your problems. Contact us to find out what we can do for you.