Stonebridge Provides Intranet-Based Document Management System for Baker Oil Tools; Engineers on Three Continents Collaborate More Efficiently

Business Wire, Nov 2, 1999

DALLAS--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Nov. 2, 1999--

Stonebridge Technologies Inc., a leading e-business solutions consulting firm, Tuesday announced delivery of an extensive document management system for Baker Oil Tools, a division of Baker Hughes Inc.

With the new intranet-based solution, Baker Oil Tools' product developers, manufacturing personnel and key suppliers now have ready access to engineering documentation needed for its product development and manufacturing processes.

The complex, multiphase solution was developed and deployed by Stonebridge in just 150 days.

Stonebridge solutions enable companies to optimize value from information assets and enterprise systems while leveraging intellectual capital -- the knowledge and experience of a company's employees.

A full service e-business consultancy, Stonebridge also helps companies form more profitable ties with customers and suppliers, operate more efficiently, and use leading technology to gain competitive advantage.

"We are pleased Baker Oil Tools chose Stonebridge to deliver this solution," said Jim Sherriff, chief executive officer, Stonebridge Technologies. "This engagement demonstrates how our e-business solutions, which creatively apply the latest technologies, can generate a new strategic advantage and amplify the productivity and talent of a company's workforce."

Stonebridge Accelerates Time-To-Market

Baker Oil Tools, in business for nearly a century, confronted a set of challenges faced by many large organizations engaged in product design and manufacturing.

How do you organize thousands of engineering documents, provide ready access to authorized users, enable collaboration among engineers at distant sites, monitor the use of engineering drawings and track changes, provide version control, ensure security and accelerate product development?

For answers, Baker selected a Stonebridge e-business solution. After performing an extensive e-readiness(TM) requirements assessment, Stonebridge set up a flexible data warehouse to handle thousands of documents in numerous file formats ranging from text to computer-aided design.

Stonebridge consultants teamed with Baker's technical staff in Engineering, Quality Control and MIS to integrate product information within their IBM AS/400 DB2 environment into a UNIX-based Oracle database running on a Sun Microsystems high-availability server.

Further, the team embedded a custom, browse-based, document management front end -- utilizing CMS from Workgroup Technologies at the core of the interface -- into AutoCAD and MicroStation, the two computer-aided design software platforms used by Baker Engineering personnel.

This enabled the Engineering staff to access documents and handle routine document management simply by pulling down a CMS menu from within either of the two CAD environments.

The integrated solution allows for viewing and printing of documents from a Web browser by authorized departments worldwide, while ensuring only the latest released documents are available outside of Engineering. Additionally, the solution included a special feature allowing for high-speed batch printing to support the needs of Manufacturing.

"Our goal is to achieve significant productivity boosts by reducing the inherent bottleneck in paper and microfilm based processes," said Oscar Herrera, director of engineering services, Baker Oil Tools. "We needed a customized system that would provide access to documents throughout our product development cycles and provide more efficient management of the Release process.

"Our specifications called for tracking the release states of various documentation and engineering processes and project workloads, as well as automating the Release-to-Manufacturing Process.

"To ensure instant access to the right documents at the right time, technical criteria included the use of standard Web browsers, thus allowing our engineers and manufacturing personnel at Baker facilities in the United States, Scotland, Venezuela and Singapore to collaborate more efficiently," concluded Herrera.

Comprehensive Solution Delivered On Time, On Budget

An important aspect of this solution involved digitally scanning Baker Oil Tools' legacy paper-based documents and aperture cards into the system -- a task made daunting by the sheer volume of documents to scan and index. Each scan was indexed with eight to 10 attributes developed with input from Baker.

To ensure efficient, low cost document management after the engagement, the solution also provided Baker with an easy-to-use-scanning interface so Baker personnel could scan additional documents as the need arose.

Further, Stonebridge configured the integrated solution to allow for optimal performance worldwide. To do this, Stonebridge deployed seven Sun Microsystem High Availability Servers running Netscape's Enterprise Web Server in strategic Baker locations worldwide.

To assist in management of this global system, Stonebridge developed and implemented tools for monitoring, managing and maintaining this worldwide e-business solution.