Your Workday Without SOLIDWORKS PDM
It happens every day. As we are engaged in our daily activities we need to create or reference documents that are stored in various methods and locations throughout the business. We set off to find the information not thinking about how much effort it might take. No matter how much time it takes to find it, we rarely document how much time we just wasted that could be eliminated with better methods. At the end of each day, the time spent searching for information is a significant amount of time.
So why do we often consider this as just a fact of life instead of a business issue? The simple answer may be that we are just used to it. In the information age we have been using these same techniques whether at home or at work to find files. The reality of what affect searching has on productivity and lost time is astounding.
More Than Just Time is Lost
According to payscale.com, searching for documents costs on average $3,900 per employee per year. The number is based on only spending 30 minutes per day searching for information. In engineering the burden rates are higher and the number of times you search data is increased as well.
The problem doesn’t stop there, searching is a complex problem with ripples that affect much more than the individual’s time and productivity. Imagine for a minute you have just spent 30 minutes searching for a design document and could not find it. Chances are you will ask a peer for assistance in finding the file. This may result in a 75% success rate. However, you now have 2 employees using time to search. For the 25% of searches that are fruitless you may have to recreate the file. If it’s engineering data you may take out a new part number and create the new file. Eventually that new data ends up in the new business system and gets ordered as inventory for manufacturing. In this scenario you have 2 SKU and redundant inventory as a result of searching. Not everyone is creating engineering data. In that case, when you recreate a file, you create duplication. Duplication can lead to using incorrect documents and someone’s time to figure out which version is correct.
Searching for files is a HUGE Problem. The great thing is, SOLIDWORKS PDM makes it easy and gives you an almost 90% reduction in time spent. Do you want your time back to innovate and be more productive?
Managing the Flow of Data is Crucial to Keeping a Project on Schedule
Stay organized and avoid the headaches of re-works and schedule overruns with SOLIDWORKS Product Data Management