We’re looking into paperless manufacturing and wanted to see if anybody out there has made the journey. I’m curious to see what Epicor offerings or 3rd party software you’re using and a guestimate on what it cost you.
Thanks in advance
We have been looking into that too here. The last epicor user meeting we had went over this exact thing. There is a 3rd party software that is integrated into epicor, its called docSTAR I’m not sure on the pricing or anything but it looked really nice when they were presenting it.
Paperless Manufacturing is quite a leap for some. I was successful in getting a department or two at a client to switch. Epicor’s built in MES Work Queue is how Epicor does this (short of going to their Mattec product, depends on your manufacturing environment a Mattec is more for automated integration with your equipment).
The real trick is first getting your scheduling and Job reporting down and timely as the Work Queue will display for the selected resource what Job/Operation is available for work.
It really does require a shift in how everyone thinks.
-Rick
www.getaligned.solutions
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We are in the middle of a project to go paperless. We are taking it in stages. We started out printing 4000 pages of travelers a week. And we just got a new program with over 100 new part numbers that would all need travelers. We took the 2 least complicated areas and they are going paperless soon (almost done proving to quality that the traceability is there without the physical traveler). In more complex areas we are reducing paper usage by having just the BOM and Ops list print from Epicor and controlling the work instructions with Qualtrax (our document and process management software). We are printing a single sheet (also controlled by Qualtrax) for the buyoff stamps from the operators and QC. Yesterday we saw a demo of Buildguide from Laserguide for use in the layup room. This is our most complicated area as there are tons of step buyoff and QC verifications as they are laying down the plys. The program looks great and would allow us to go completely paperless and still capture the data we need.
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Thank you to all for sharing. Melissa how long have you been working on your project ? I assume Qualtrax doesn’t integrate with Epicor or does it ?
We are 3 months in. Between figuring out how to structure the jobs to using the work queue and proving it out to QC it has been slow going. Qualtrax does not integrate but you can link the docs to the parts/jobs as attachments.
This is my goal with my company and it’s epicor use. I have the benefit of
being new to erp so I don’t have all the preconceived notions of the paper
trail. I am making screens and workflows that allow any employee to easily
access any information and act upon it digitally. Mostly it’s simple
customizations. There are also some changes users have to make, like not
printing, then scanning and storing certain avoidable documents, like so
sales and purchase orders. I am having them print to PDF, email to
requesters and store in a document management system (epicor has their own
called docstar you can use - epicor, make promotion checks out to Chris
Conn)