Simple Tools for Managing Manufacturing Data

Robert Kondner
Index Designs
Towson MD USA

As the assembly of electronic products becomes more automated the collection, storage and retrieval of electronic data demands additional software tools to manage data. The wide spread use of web and email in the delivery of electronic data requires close integration of these data sources to an organization's data system. A number of new and sophisticated functions are now available within current office software and operating systems but many of these features have gone unnoticed by many users. The purpose of this paper is to identify some of these functions and explain how they can be used to help manage engineering data.

With most customer communications now taking the form of email a desktop office suite is the ideal point to start capturing customer transactions. The problems of finding data can be addresses using advanced search features of operating systems and by using file properties and tags. Search and sort features are also contained in current office tools making large collections of emails more easily read.

OneNote provides a very flexible storage contains for various file types. It has a simple organization format, that of a 3 ring binder, which is easy to learn and use. OneNote contains its own set of search functions and it is integrated with the Microsoft Office suite of desktop software. OneNote is tied to the "To Do" list in Outlook and helps generate tasks and develop schedules.

The task of "BOM Line Item Lookup and Coding" is not a simple task and it can involve multiple databases. Standard applications like Excel do contain a number of database features and the more recent version include "Pivot Tables" which are very much like the data grids found in database applications. Additional products from 3rd party vendors or consultants will be required to further automate BOM coding. It is very important that any coding work done for a job be made available for the coding of future jobs. Experience show that many "New Jobs" are based on previous work and even new jobs often use a number of components found on previous jobs by the same customer.

A suite of desktop tools would not be considered appropriate for running a larger assembly organization but for smaller organizations it might provide the required functions at a very low cost and learning curve.