Business Process Automation for Drawing Review Process

The Project Manager, on behalf of the organization, initiates a project that comprises of Master Drawing Lists (MDL). The MDL contains all the necessary information to drive the desired output, i.e. detailed machine drawings of varied nature.

Once these MDLs are created, the vendors are notified for the same, and they begin to submit Engineering Drawings files to be reviewed by the reviewing team.

With multiple projects running across India, and numerous vendors associated with each project, it became very challenging to monitor the performance of the vendors, as well as having visibility to the status of the projects themselves.

The review of the submitted drawing required the perusal of the reviewing team (Reviewer, Custodian, Project Manager, ad-hoc assignees), and the comments and annotations done by various engineers in the drawing could not be tracked and observed from a single platform in the workflow.

The review process was also in the need of an archival mechanism for past projects and projects on their successful completion.

Features like version control, status monitoring, reporting and necessary communication through emails would also add great value to the reviewing process.

With a challenge as unique as this, Somnetics was quick to come up with a solution that was just as unique.

The proposed Business Process Automation of the drawing review process made sure it covered all the problem areas, for an end-to-end solution.

The implementation of a systematic workflow and automation modules to cover various stages of the review process simplified the process to a great extent, with all the bells and whistles like archival mechanism for past projects, annotation of drawings, version control, status monitoring, reporting and necessary communication through emails.

The automation enablement offers the below:

1. MDL creation

2. Drawing review

3. Collaboration

4. Reporting and Monitoring of processes and tasks

5. Document approval workflow

6. Publishing the final approved version along with revision history trail

7. Customized reports and dashboards

The technologies employed to design this solution are as below:

1. Seamless, proprietary of Somnetics, is a solution platform for Business Process Automation

2. Tailored i-doc STD application, to meet all the requirements of the customer

3. Browser-based solution under Ubuntu Environment

The web-based solution helped bring the reviewing team and the vendors on the same page, thereby saving a lot of time and enabling clear communication and feedback to be shared.

It also facilitated the client to have a real-time track of the vendor from the dashboard, as well as devised a transparent review process across the vendor and the reviewing team.

As a cherry on the cake, the application also facilitates the invoicing process for the vendor quickly, based on the completion of review and approval by the client.