ABB’s Connecticut office was experiencing long turnaround times to research replacement parts for its customers resulting in poor customer service and lost revenue. When client equipment is down, it not only interrupts their business operation but can also be a safety hazard.
ABB is a worldwide leading manufacturer of installed industrial power plants such as boilers and steam generators. A Bill of Materials (BOM) is a parts of the raw materials of all the components of a device. This collection of paper BOMs were 60-years-old and recorded in over 100 formats, handwritten, and on various types of paper stock and color. The vellum and blue colored paper were especially challenging to create sharp images. When a client called for a replacement part, a service representative had to sort through warehouse files looking for the correct BOM. This took on average 7-10 days and resulted in many clients to source replacement parts from competitors. If they could find the part at all.
To solve this issue, an enterprise-wide parts management system was developed. When a client called, a service representative could instantaneously search the BOM data on a line item basis then view an image of the original BOM.
All that was missing was the usable, editable line item data to search and PDF images of the original BOMs.
