In engineering, both precision and accuracy are crucial to the safety of consumers. Manufacturers of medical devices, heavy machinery, automotive parts and aerospace components are aware that lives are at risk, and understand that quality control cannot be compromised.

Figuring out ways to safely and responsibly balance financial and human risk with advancements in efficiency is key to maintaining a profitable bottom line and keeping products moving through the to-market pipeline. How can your company help preserve the integrity of the R&D process, meet rigorous compliance expectations, while reducing time and labor investment?

Consider DISCUS IDA™ which is the ideal solution for cutting time and improving accuracy at one of the most pivotal points in the engineering compliance workflow: documentation.

Documentation is a significant pain point

In industries like aerospace, for example, every component designed for a plane can get stalled at the first article inspection phase if documentation isn’t meticulous and perfectly accurate. This step is critical in getting components to market but has, until now, been subject to legacy drawing analysis that bottlenecks the process.

2D engineering drawings of each part must be completely accurate and scrupulously annotated. Images and specification documents typically use ballooned drawings to identify and describe parts within an illustration and require an exhaustive list of requirements.

This work was originally done manually, in a painstaking effort that involved hours of labor to create the ballooned drawings in a PowerPoint presentation with the listing all of the measurements in an Excel document. It could take up to 2 hours for this workflow to be completed even for a simple document, and many more for a complex part.

Missing just one measurement number or incorrectly attributing a single characteristic can cause a component to fail First Part Inspection, requiring the drawing images and requirement lists to be revisited and stalling the workflow. Finding ways to improve both speed and accuracy was a problem that necessitated advanced automation to address.

Advancements in document analysis and rendering

The development of Optical Character Recognition (OCR) significantly speeds up the process of documentation. OCR is capable of converting written or printed text in PDF files or other images into characters that can be correctly processed by a computer.

For the purposes of documentation in engineering, OCR can provide automated ballooning by extracting text from images of 2D drawings and specification documents. With OCR, the time investment could be cut by as much as two-thirds, reducing time costs significantly.

However, OCR has limitations, with a yes/no ability to extract text and an inability to improve processes over time. The time savings benefit provided by OCR remains at a consistent two-thirds maximum reduction in hands-on management. This means engineering and quality planning personnel must still devote time to each task and must also deal with the inefficiencies or failures of OCR on a document-by-document basis.

A new level of analysis and processing power was needed to continue improving speed and accuracy and enhance the ability of automation to correctly assess new documents and apply controlled standards for precision. The next step in documentation development is driven by artificial intelligence (AI), which is uniquely suited for reviewing legacy drawings.

Reasons to implement IDA™

Intelligent Drawing Analysis™ (IDA™) fills the gaps of OCR limitations and delivers an increased level of automation which serves a dual purpose: it simultaneously achieves even more time reduction per document, and also considerably reduces the risk of human error.

Legacy drawings still account for approximately 40% of the workload. These technical data packages, even with OCR, still account for a massive allocation of labor hours to work through and prepare for presentation for First Part Inspection.

IDA™ technology amplifies the automated extraction of technical data from 2D engineering drawings and can improve accuracy and speed over time. AI tools empower the software to continuously gain more insight, learning from usage and refining its approach based on feedback from exceptions.

This provides even greater precision and saves time as the usage increases, delivering documents in a fraction of the time previously required and adding new layers of intelligent analysis to the process. Future iterations of IDA™ will add new functionality, allowing the automatic capture of additional pertinent information including bill of documents, bill of materials, and default tolerances.

By implementing IDA™, SMBs and enterprises in target industries can leverage the generational improvement of a manufacturing and quality engineering software solution powered by AI. This allows for a nearly hands-free process for creating the comprehensive, compliant documentation required for individual components.

The dual benefits of IDA™

Increased speed is definitely the hallmark of IDA™ adoption. Where OCR dropped the time per simple document from 2 hours (performed manually) to 40 minutes (using automation), IDA™ slashes time-per-document even more, from 40 minutes to a mere 5 minutes.

Reducing human input limits the risk of human error. Documents can be pushed through the workflow with greater speed and accuracy. Returned documents due to a failed first inspection are reduced significantly. Backlog can be cleared, and all associated review and inspection flow facilitated.

Experienced staff members using IDA™ are empowered to shift from repetitive hands-on work to a supervisory role. Instead of performing the tedious process of annotating documents, they can leverage their expertise to complete reviews and ensure the quality of each completed package before its delivery for inspection.

Accelerate your workflows with DISCUS Software

DISCUS Software was the first software company to conceptualize and develop intelligent, transformative tools to address the issue of First Article Inspection failures. Through the adoption of IDA™, you can improve and accelerate drawing analysis, review, and reporting workflows. Increased speed, reduced human error, and the ability to catch up on existing backlog make IDA™ the ideal next step in modernizing your organization’s operations.

To learn more about implementing IDA™ in your organization, get in touch with our team to schedule your demo today.