For more than 140 years, Eberhard Manufacturing has been an industry leader, providing companies with high-quality industrial hardware for a variety of applications. Today they are a leading hardware manufacturer of industrial, vehicular, military and specialty hardware for trucks, trailers, fire and rescue equipment, marine, utility and van bodies, off road vehicles, and construction vehicles as well as toolboxes, electrical and industrial enclosures and panels.  

Eberhard Manufacturing had been looking for a solution that could address some specific business needs for their Quality Assurance department. Although the Quality Assurance Department had been using a small desktop scanner to convert documents into PDF files, those images were simply stored in a common folder on the server and were difficult to retrieve because the only way to find them was by the name given to the document. Additionally, paper copies were still being maintained in a file room, taking up valuable space and resources. 

Key Highlights

Industry

  • Manufacturing

Technologies

  • DIF

Services & Solutions

    The Challenge

    Eberhard Manufacturing needed an efficient, easy to use, low-cost document imaging system for their Quality Assurance Department. The Quality Assurance Department was able to scan in documents and store them in a common folder, but retrieval and sharing of the files was cumbersome and ineffective. 

     

    The Solution

    After reviewing other document imaging options, including solutions offered by their copier company, Eberhard Manufacturing was impressed by the demonstration of DIF and the potential to leverage it beyond just the Quality Assurance department. They also knew that the application had to be easy to use, as productivity and employee acceptance would be critical to a successful implementation. 

    A member of the Document Imaging Foundations development team was able to meet with the Quality Assurance department to assess their needs. In just a few days, the system was installed and configured to the customer’s specifications.  Additionally, Eberhard was able to utilize an existing server that had the capacity to run the application and hold the stored documents generated over the next several years, which helped keep the costs low to meet budgetary constraints. 

    The ease of use was as advertised. Several other departments have seen what is being done in Quality Assurance and are excited to take advantage of the technology for their own departmental needs.
    – Steve Haswell, IT Manager for Eberhard

     

     

    The Results

    The Quality Assurance Department began using the system as part of their daily process the day after the installation was completed!  The ease of use allowed technicians to maintain their productivity while scanning and indexing the documents, but dramatically increased the speed of retrieval.  

    Document Imaging Foundations is designed to be flexible, and is a solution that can be easily tailored to enhance a company’s business processes, not replace them.   Customization is part of the solution, as well as the ability to integrate the system with your existing applications to add even more value to the documents you store.   

    Download the full case study here.