Raytheon shares data across the sea

ELECTRONIC DOCUMENT MANAGEMENT
SYSTEM SHRINKS RESPONSE TIME TO U.K.

By Kim Ann Zimmermann

When Raytheon Corporate Jet (Wichita, KS) merged with Beech Aircraft in the United Kingdom, the company realized that transparent information flow between operations on both continents was vital. While both were subsidiaries of the Raytheon Aircraft Company, they never had a need to share documents until the merger. With the merger, each company needed to share data with colleagues working on another continent.

"We were still manufacturing and operating in the United Kingdom and doing work in the United States,"' says Phil Tos, program manager for corporate imaging. "We needed data in both locations. Sending paper documents wasn't a viable solution. We needed a single copy of intellectual data available to people working in all of our locations."

In early 1994, Raytheon and the U.K. staff started planning implementation of an electronic document management system. They chose Cimage, a U.K.-based company with a U.S. subsidiary, Access (Cincinnati). This would enable storage, management and distribution of engineering and product data in electronic form.

Currently about 4.5 million documents are on-line, with 2 million to 3 million large-format documents. This will grow to 20 million when all the Beech and aircraft maintenance information is added. Although today there arc about 100 users, in 1997 the user population will grow to 500 to 700, and by 1998, the intention is to provide access to all 2,800 of the company's PCs.

A system configured with user involvement

"We started programming in spring of 1994 and installed in spring 1995," Tos says. "From very early on, we held meetings with everyone who would be involved. We had two gentlemen in the U.K. who were also involved—one engineer and one involved in system support."

When Raytheon Corporate Jet first rolled out the system, program managers kept the aperture cards and paper copy as backup. "At first, people were just using the imaging system to print. We started with weekly user meetings to show people the many things they could do with the system, and those meetings have now gone to monthly. What I found is that all our users were very willing to use computers and were eager for us to show them the capabilities of the system."

The local area networks are either 100-Mb Ethernet or 16-Mb token ring. Wide-area network configurations are under analysis. The server platform is a Sun 3000 with 256 Mbs of memory, 60 Gbs of magnetic storage and two Hewlett-Packard (Palo Alto, CA) 96-GB jukeboxes. They are using Fujitsu (San Jose) scanners for documents and a mixture of Intergraph (Huntsville, AL) and CalComp (Anaheim, CA) scanners for large-format drawings.

Cimage is integrated with IBM's (Armonk, NY) Product Manager, both in engineering and manufacturing. Raytheon uses Cimage's ImageMaster as the viewer, no matter what the data or the data repository.

Today, data is accessible on the shop floor and engineering areas. Currently, the system contains all the product and maintenance data on the Beech corporate jets. Users of this on-line information are located in Wichita, Salina and Andover, KS; Little Rock, AK, the United Kingdom, and soon, E-Systems (lrving, TX), a subcontractor.

Time-saving and access benefits

"Probably the first benefit was to have all data accessible from any point," Tos says. "Previously, it would take two weeks to distribute a change in a drawing once it was approved. Now, it lakes 30 minutes and is available in Kansas, Arkansas and the U.K. Once a document is requested, response time is about 15 seconds locally and two to three minutes in the U.K. due to the sheer distance the data must travel.

"It certainly is not a local area network, but it is a tremendous improvement over having to fax and overnight data to the U.K."

Future directions

Tos has already identified and provided resolutions for early challenges. "'Strain on the network is a lot more than originally anticipated. What that got down to was fine-tuning," Tos says. Another problem was determining the actual relationships between some of the documents, because Cimage can manage all of those relationships.

Future plans include moving all product and maintenance data into the system over the course of 1997. There are also plans to provide access to Cimage-based data within office areas, customer service, customer support, and the fixed-base operations centers where aircraft are maintained. Some of these remote service locations are owned by Raytheon, and some by independent operators. Access is intended for all service locations, both in North America and abroad.

An invoicing application will be implemented within Cimage in 1997, based on the new multipage and workflow features of Cimage.

Customer support keeps a record of every call and every repair. Today, that is in the form of 10 million sheets of paper. They will be put on-line, allowing instant access from any PC.

Kim Ann Zimmermann is a free-lance writer, 00(1) 609-448-7509, E-mail:

Reprint produced by Reprint Management Services, (717) 560-2001, with permission from IMAGING WORLD, © 1997 volume 6, issue 3, March 3rd, The Imaging Group, Cardinal Business Media, P.O. Box 1358, Camden, ME 04643.