Document Management
What is Document Management?
Depending on the business need, the implementation of a Document Management system would normally take place in several phases.
The foundation involves, registering the existence/creation of existing and new documents in a business area. Associated key words are nominated, or Full Text Retrieval (FTR) Optical Character Recognition (OCR) aids used, to facilitate retrieval. An indication of its date of destruction or archiving should be made.
The next level would enable others to retrieve and view a document, allowing it to marked up with any corrections (often called red-lining). These would then be assessed and incorporated if accepted.
The computer system would be required to ensure security of access to documents to those with the need or authority and the integrity of documents, i.e. control of its content and status of approval.
This could be linked with Workflow. This facility enables an organisation to stipulate who or what job functions need to be involved in a business work process. A clerical task may be quite simple, A checks several boxes of a form, depending on the values contained, passes to B or C who action further, before D approves. In Engineering the workflows are often more complex, requiring multi-step sequences through levels of in-house engineers, external consultants and Approval Authorities and some degree or iteration. Engineering Standards and Corporate Standing Orders would require fixed patterns of Approval, often going to the highest level of the company.
There are of course other issues, but the main one not mentioned in this overview is that of media. Images and hence the term Document Image Processing (DIP) is often the vehicle as it takes account of paper-base documents of all sizes as well as other electronic, video and audio media.
Important external issues concern communications with Suppliers and of course the public, raising issues of Document Capture and Electronic Data Interchange (EDI).
A Typical Document Structure
NB Each box will supported in the integrated computer system associated with the Document Management function.
My background
My early work was a simple vendor control system for an engineering contractor’s project in the late ‘70’s. Next, in the early ‘80’s, a major project was to guide BNFL to a Drawing Registry system for 1.25 m drawings increasing by 1,000 per week, for the THORP Project. More experimentally, initial attempts to have key data “on-line” were made on this project. In the mid 80’s, I pioneered sales and use of a PC system, arguably ahead of its time, and a key element in a client project to register and then make a raster/vector conversion of 80,000 paper drawings. In late ‘92, I chaired the Intergraph task force set up to re-specify their product’s direction, as a PC based, modular offering.
A later major assignment, for a major utility, was as Programme Manager for the provision of Document Management on 1,500 desktops, the replacement of 140 UNIX CAD seats with Windows/Intel equipment. In addition, 1,200 standalone databases were to be migrated to an Enterprise wide ORACLE system.
A further large project was to customise and validate a system, to control drawings and documents in a regulatory compliant way for a pharmaceutical R&D facility.
Systems have been specified and installed in support of the Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC) for developers of software for use on the healthcare industry.
The Software Development Life-cycle (SDLC)
