Read our latest case study to discover why a one of the largest fabricators of structural steel components in North America chose docAlpha to transform how they handled bills of lading and material test reports, boosting efficiency while improving inventory control.
When Hirschfeld VP of Operational Technology Danny Young looked at how his company handled bills of lading for its steel shipments and material test reports, he saw ample room for improvement. Manual processing of physical documents that were critical to tracking inventory and maintaining compliance for the bridge, power station and architectural structural components required the equivalent of five full time employees.
The process was labor-intensive and paper-based, meaning that retrieving and sharing information involved manual effort and created process bottlenecks.
While the company had invested in a document management system in the past to manage their files, Young said the system had been under-utilized and didn’t have the flexibility to meet their needs.
“[The DMS] we had was very static; any minor changes would mean that it would not pick up the information,” Young said.
Hirschfeld Industries chose to implement the docAlpha Transformation Platform from Artsyl Technologies to intelligently extract data from their bills of lading and material test reports, streamlining the flow of purchase/inventory data while ensuring that all documents were easy to access throughout the process.
By relying on docAlpha to support handling bills of lading, the company has radically reduced the time and effort required to manage and control their inventory. Because Hirschfeld views its new process as a competitive advantage, he declined to divulge all of the details of how the new process was implemented.
The net result is that the company is now able to quickly and efficiently digitize bills of lading and material test reports in a way that eliminates manual data entry and provides the flexibility and automated validation necessary to deliver timely, accurate results that boost efficiency.
Beyond efficiency gains, the real benefit to automating and digitizing material test reports is ensuring that finished products are always made from materials that confirm to rigorous specifications.
“It’s a quality issue,” Young said, “And that’s really, to me, the biggest competitive advantage, is we are not going to cut something out of the incorrect material, because of the system we have in place using docAlpha.”
To learn more about how docAlpha delivered a complete solution for digitizing critical documents and streamlined inventory processes for Hirschfeld, read the full case study