What is Engineering Data Management

Engineering Data & Document Management Systems (EDMS) are foundational to modern industrial operations. They are software solutions for the turnkey management of all engineering asset information as used in industries such as energy, utilities, chemicals, oil & gas, pharmaceuticals, manufacturing, and mining. These solutions provide organizations with fast, centralized access to their most important designs, documents, and data in a secure, collaborative platform.

By centralizing data related to products, plants, equipment, and capital projects, engineering data management systems connect stakeholders from engineering, maintenance, operations, capital projects, and construction to improve efficiency, reduce risk, and lower operating costs.

These solutions provide unique value beyond general document management or enterprise content management solutions, providing capabilities specifically designed to address the complex requirements of managing engineering information in a plant or facility environment.  

Engineering data management solutions integrate with computer-aided design/engineering/manufacturing systems (CAD/CAE/CAM), and integrate with project management systems, computerized maintenance management systems (CMMS), and enterprise resource planning systems (ERP), serving as a cohesive element within the engineering value chain.

In this blog, we’ll explore the challenges and risks that commonly lead organizations to adopt engineering data management systems and we’ll outline the capabilities these solutions provide. We’ll reveal the role of engineering data management as a strategic platform to support core business goals like operational excellence and digital transformation.

The Critical Role of Engineering Data Management in an Asset-Driven, Process-Intensive Environment

Gaining control of the drawings, documents and data associated with your plant or facility environment is mission critical to efficient and safe operations, maintenance, and capital projects.

You’re managing a wealth of critical information, including:

• plant as-builts
• equipment drawings
• operating and maintenance manuals
• project designs, details, studies, and specs
• contracts and procurement
• process system design and software
• construction bid packages and job tracking
• testing and startup
• project handover
• and much more…

The stakes are high. EDMS systems help organizations gain control of their engineering content and processes by addressing common challenges that increase risk, elevate costs, and limit growth, including:

• No Centralized Source of Truth: Without a centralized platform for document access and control, stakeholders across an organization’s value chain are disconnected. This can include design, engineering, maintenance, operations, quality, compliance, capital projects, construction, and external contractors. Data silos limit collaboration between teams.
• Wasted Time Searching for Documents: Studies from IDC and McKinsey & Company show that workers spend 20-30% of their time searching for the right information. That’s a day or more per week per worker! Without an EDMS, organizations are relying on Windows folders and email. Documents are stored and uncontrollably duplicated across enterprise and local drives and throughout email Inboxes. They’re buried in complex folders, each unique to a department or site.

• Expensive Version Control Mistakes: The costs of a version control issue can include worker safety incidents including loss of life, unplanned shutdowns or outages, field workers unable to respond in an emergency, expensive scrap and rework, costly change orders with contractors, compliance issues, and wasted time.

• No Traceability: If there is no record of who did what and when in a plant or facility environment, an organization is at great risk when it comes to compliance, litigation, and intellectual property theft.
• Time-consuming, Manual Workflow Processes: Relying on manual processes to route engineering content through change, review and approval processes is time-consuming and error-prone.
• Inefficient Collaboration Across Teams & Sites: Inefficient collaboration across departments, sites, time zones, and with external contractors creates project delays.

• Broken CAD File Relationships: Managing the complex file relationships that are native to 2D and 3D CAD systems like AutoCAD, MicroStation, Autodesk Inventor or SOLIDWORKS is difficult. As files are checked in/out, routed through workflows, moved, or renamed, file relationships can be broken.

• No Centralized Visualization and Markup: Without a centralized solution for visualization and markup that supports all the formats an organization needs, they’re either distributing and marking up uncontrolled paper drawings, buying expensive CAD licenses, or configuring and using multiple viewing solutions to support various document formats.
• Poor Visibility to Data for Decision-Making: Without a centralized EDMS, there’s no easy way to access the data that is needed about your documents, processes, and projects that will help you operate efficiently and make better decisions.
• Documents and Intellectual Property are at Risk: The risks of intellectual property theft and cyber-attacks are widely known and understood. Unsecured documents, which may contain highly valuable intellectual property, can be lost, stolen, or compromised.

These challenges, if left unaddressed, have a significant impact on an organization's bottom line. By implementing an EDMS, companies can mitigate these risks and improve operational efficiency.

Essential Engineering Data Management Capabilities

A comprehensive EDMS provides the core capabilities needed to ensure operational excellence in your manufacturing plant or campus facility.  

• Smart Document Vaulting: EDMS systems vary in how they vault your documents, all with the goal of protecting your documents and ensuring access through the system where activities are tracked, and best practices are automated. An ideal vaulting method secures your documents and the intellectual property they contain without sacrificing the intelligence of your existing folder structure and filenames, preserving the intelligence you’ve built over years. If you ever decide to transition to another document management system in the future, you won’t be stuck in a proprietary system.

• Centralized Platform for Document Access and Control: An EDMS provides a common platform that simplifies document access and control, ensuring your entire value chain is on the same page. It empowers the organization to drive best practices and optimize processes that increase efficiency and reduce risk of costly mistakes.
  
  
• Fast Access to the Right Document, from Anywhere: An EDMS gives your entire workforce fast access to the right information, day or night. No more wasted time looking for the right information or recreating work because you couldn’t find something. Full-text and metadata-based searches gives maintenance, operations, design, engineering, construction, and vendor teams the ability to locate documents from nearly any device.

• Automated Version Control: End the cycle of duplicates and make sure everyone always has the correct version at hand. When a document is checked out, the EDMS locks the master document. Edits happen on a copy until the document is checked in and approved. An EDMS should support minor (or WIP) versions as well. In a plant or facility environment, version control can become more complex, with concurrent projects requiring editing access to the same document. Where there are complex CAD file relationships like XREFS or Inventor parts and assemblies, one needs to be able to control the relationship of a parent document to specific versions of the child document it references.   
  
  
• Streamline Workflow and Collaboration: An EDMS makes it easy to automate simple or complex workflows, so all your documents follow a correct path for review and approval. They provide visibility to workflow status and automate relevant notifications to stakeholders when there is a bottleneck or upon final approval.

• Automate Transmittals: Simplify the process of finding files, validating version accuracy, tracking down reference files, creating cover sheets, packaging, sending, and maintaining an auditable record. An EDMS helps you create transmittals in a fraction of the time, freeing up your resources for more valuable work.
  
  
• Leverage Metadata: An EDMS captures essential metadata from CAD and Office attributes as well as system and custom data fields, enabling users to leverage that data for searching and reporting. Using metadata is a powerful time-saver and productivity enabler for people to view and interact with document data based on specific criteria, such as departments, groups, or project names. An EDMS should allow you to define hierarchical relationships or dependencies between data fields to streamline data entry and automate data population.

• Automate File Naming: An EDMS allows an organization to enforce consistent file naming conventions that may be tailored to each department's specific needs. With flexible configuration options, an EDMS enables auto-generated number sequences, fixed-width placeholders for user input, pre-defined dropdown selections, delimiters, and restricted fields to create standardized file names that are easy to understand and navigate.
  
  
• Create Manual File Relationships: Users can create a parent child relation between documents of any type, providing context and improving traceability. For example, a change or work order to a drawing, an email to a specification or purchase order. Whatever the use-case, it’s easy to create hierarchical relationships and see them in a parent-child tree view.
• Tight Integration with CAD: An engineering data management system seamlessly integrates with popular CAD applications like AutoCAD, MicroStation, Inventor, and SOLIDWORKS. With an interface inside the CAD tool, designers can search or browse by metadata, preview designs, view metadata, open, insert, check out, or replace files without ever leaving their design solution. It ensures the integrity of 2D and 3D file relationships like XREFs, parts, assemblies, and configurations. Users can see where-used and composed-of details and participate in workflows.
  
  
• Integrated Visualization and Markup: An EDMS should provide an integrated solution for view and mark up of 2D and 3D CAD, office, and graphics formats. Users can measure and compare drawings and get exploded views of 3D models. This eliminates the need for expensive CAD seats or multiple viewing solutions for read-only users and simplifies design reviews and feedback from the field or plant floor.

• Simplify Compliance: An EDMS is foundational to efficient regulatory compliance by enabling granular control of document access, ensuring data integrity, providing comprehensive traceability, and automating workflow and approval processes. Compliance initiatives are further supported with authenticated approvals, digital signatures, print stamps, and watermarks.
  
  
• Security and Control: EDMS safeguards your critical data with intense security measures that protect information at rest, in transit, and in use. It can seamlessly integrate with your existing security infrastructure using Single Sign-On (SSO) for convenient, secure access across desktop and mobile devices. SSO ensures authorized users can easily access their information while maintaining the highest level of protection.
  
  
• Automated PDF Publishing. Support for automated or on-demand publishing of PDF, TIFF, or hardcopy documents from AutoCAD, MicroStation, SolidWorks, and other applications is essential for many organizations. The capability to offload publishing to a dedicated workstation to optimize user productivity is ideal. Output options should include the EDMS system, a network folder, or external sources.
  
  
• Mobile Access: An EDMS mobile application gives remote workers the ability to access, view, and annotate rendered PDF documents from any location, whether offline or online. It eliminates reliance on outdated physical copies and expedites information retrieval and field feedback. This information loop ensures data integrity and helps to maintain an accurate representation of as-built documentation.

• Interoperability with Other Applications: An EDMS that integrates easily with other business systems, such as ERP or CMMS can automate dataflows and work processes across the entire IT infrastructure.

These capabilities make EDMS an essential tool for any organization managing plant, facility or product design data. By leveraging these capabilities, organizations can improve efficiency, reduce risk, and make better decisions.

What to Look for in an EDMS Solution and Vendor

Selecting an EDMS solution and vendor is a process that, when done right, ensures the implementation is successful, meeting the needs of all stakeholders while being affordable and easy to maintain internally.

The process involves careful consideration of several factors. As you embark on this journey, keep these guidelines in mind:

• Focus on both the solution and provider capabilities in your industry: Ensure the solution meets your specific needs and the vendor has experience in your industry.
• Capture user requirements: Gather input from users to ensure the solution meets their needs.
• Look for proven performance: Choose a solution with a track record of success in your industry that spans decades, with positive reviews and references from organizations similar to yours.
• Understand provider stability: Select a vendor with a stable financial position and a long-term commitment to the EDMS market.
• Check for ease to implement, use and maintain: The solution should be easy to implement, use, and maintain, with minimal IT involvement.
• Ensure your documents and data are not held hostage in a proprietary system: Choose a solution that allows you to easily export your data if needed.
• Determine if the solution will meet your requirements out of the box: Are there processes you can adapt to fit the solution? Is customization required?
• Stress the importance of services and support: The vendor should provide comprehensive services and support, including training and technical support.
• Clarify implementation and maintenance costs: Understand the total cost of ownership, including implementation and support costs.
• Determine scalability: Choose a solution that can grow with your organization.

By carefully considering these factors, you can select an EDMS solution and vendor that will meet your organization's needs and provide long-term value.

Conclusion

As illustrated in this blog, the lack of engineering data and document management in a plant or facility environment equates to enormous risk related to:

• Capital project delays
• Wasted time of a day or more per employee per week
• Human safety incidents on the plant floor
• Unplanned shutdowns or outages
• Field workers unable to respond to emergent situations
• Construction or manufacturing scrap and rework
• Costly change orders with contractors
• Regulatory compliance issues
• Inefficient work process that impact growth initiatives

For these reasons, along with regulatory changes, capital project surges, government investments in infrastructure, heightened security requirements, and a need to be more efficient and competitive, manufacturing and facility leaders are ensuring they have control of their plant, facility, and product documentation.

Synergis Adept, the Trusted Leader in Engineering Data Management

Adept ensures the right people have access to the right version at the right time—from anywhere. Automate your workflow processes so they unfold seamlessly, keeping everyone on track and eliminating bottlenecks. With everyone working from one source of truth, you’ll increase efficiency, gain control, and reduce operational risk.

Adept engineering data management software is a trusted solution utilized by companies like Dow, Con Edison, Eversource, Merck, Bayer, Nucor Steel, CMC, General Mills, and Post Consumer Brands.

Ready to transform the way your organization manages and controls engineering data and documents? Explore how an EDMS like Synergis Adept can unlock the full potential of your engineering information.