Case Studies

Manufacturer Reduces Costs By Replacing Expensive PLM Systems with SharePoint

Project At a Glance

RDA replaced multiple expensive product lifecycle management systems by implementing Microsoft SharePoint as the enabling technology for document collaboration, management and workflow. Our client was able to consolidate three document management applications (each with a different set of rules and processes) into a single, standards-based interface. This allowed the company to save hundreds of thousands of dollars by eliminating the maintenance contracts for the existing PLM systems.

About Our Client

RDA's client is a leading designer and manufacturer of high-performance semiconductor components.

 

Background

Our client was struggling with the integration of disparate technologies acquired as the result of various business acquisitions. The company was working with multiple product lifecycle management (PLM) systems, which were expensive to maintain and enhance. Our client has a detailed, effective engineering process, but lacked a system to help them implement that process.

Our client investigated using one of their existing PLM systems as a successor and building their specific process into that system.  Between licensing and customization costs, this proved unrealistic. The simple fact was that the company used very little of the capability offered by the packaged systems.  What they needed was a platform that provided security, workflow and document management across all their internal applications. Combined with strong reporting capability, they could leverage this system to help standardize and grow their business.

The Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) platform was already in place in the organization.  After some research and testing, the RDA team determined that MOSS could be the platform that supported the new Product Development Engine.

 

Solution Detail

The solution involved the development of a document management and workflow system that could serve the entire organization. The solution was designed to leverage the SharePoint platform components to their fullest and only extend them where additional functionality was required.  This ensured that updates to the MOSS application would provide maximum benefit.

A search-based interface brings search to the center of an application design.  This paradigm was chosen for our client for a number of reasons:

• Users were very familiar and comfortable with search already. 
• The ability to access documents across multiple stores was critical. 
• MOSS provides a robust search engine that allowed the desired customizations to be made in a single page. 

The interface was customized to provide specific search parameters as well as extended functionality for the search results.

Another major aspect of the solution was document management. Again, SharePoint was leveraged to provide document security along with change control and versioning. The development team focused on the specification of document properties and defining rules for the management of each document type.  A custom sub document field type was created that allowed additional document storage to be included with a document library. This control bridged a gap that existed in the base MOSS platform.

Human workflow is inherently difficult to track and manage when multiple locations are involved. By creating an application, our client is able to start gathering metrics about their process. Their goal is to improve the product design process by roughly 30%, providing a strong competitive advantage in the marketplace.

Our client selected the K2 BlackPearl workflow product from SourceCode Technology.  This product provides an easy-to-use interface for building workflow systems along with a prebuilt reporting engine to help customers get the most from their system.  RDA has leveraged K2 on many occasions to build robust workflow solutions for our customers.

The final solution brought corporate document storage and individual locations for each product together in a single, easy-to-use SharePoint interface. Users can search for and work with documents from the same location and can move the documents through multiple workflow implementations depending on the document type and purpose.

RDA provided best practices consulting for MOSS 2007 standard intranet portal and enterprise search capabilities. RDA also delivered guidance on implementing search with regard to indexing, testing crawling and search characteristics such as wildcard search and best bets.

 

Benefits

Our client was able to consolidate three document management applications (each with a different set of rules and processes) into a single, standards-based interface. This interface allows users from all across the company to interact with company systems and processes in the exact same way. This allowed our client to save hundreds of thousands of dollars by eliminating the maintenance contracts for the existing PLM systems. Since they already owned SharePoint, there was no net change in licensing cost. The entire investment was focused on solving the business problem with code specifically tailored to their business rules.