Every business is different and has different workflows. The same is true in the design office. A big driving factors behind a design office’s workflow is the software (or lack of) that is being used. Over and above that is the question of whether you are getting the most out of the software you are using.
We all have side admin tasks that need to happen as part of our jobs. Not to take away from any other professions, but in the design office there can be a lot of admin! It is easy to assume that a simple task will be a quick one, but that is often not the case. The other factor to consider is the frequency of a task – be it daily, weekly or monthly.
It is easy to spot the need for process automation, but how does one gauge whether it is worth the investment? Start by picking a process to evaluate. Some examples of design related admin tasks include:
- Creating Bills of Material
- Printing a drawing/creating a PDF
- Filling in the ERP system
- Filling out a title block
- Filling out a revision block
- Copying files from a similar project
Next, we need to work out how often the task is repeated and how long it takes. Once we have that we need only get an average salary for the design office staff plus how many team members there are in order to determine what the cost is per month. Using the printing a drawing/creating a PDF scenario as an example, it may look something like this:
Please note all figures used are examples only.
Figures for Printing a drawing/Creating PDF’s:
Task time: 5 minutes
Repetition per day: 5 per day
Average salary: £33000 per month / 21 days = £1571 per day / 8 hours = £196 per hour Staff Number: 5 people
5 minutes x 5 times per day = 25 minutes per person per day
25 minutes per day x 5 people = 125 minutes per day
125 minutes / 60 minutes = 2.083 hours per day
£196 average salary per hour x 2.083 hours = £408.27 per day cost to business
£408.27 cost per day x 21 days = £8573.63 per month cost to business
Now is the perfect time to approach Man and Machine to get a proposal for automating the task of printing drawings and creating PDFs. As stated earlier, every business is different and therefore more investigation will likely be needed from our side. Here is a possible scenario:
The business is running 5 X PDMC seats and has a Vault Basic server in place. After doing a scope, Man and Machine proposes to implement Vault Professional with a job processor to create PDF’s automatically based on the released state of a lifecycle. Additional seats of Vault Office will be allocated to the 3 non-CAD users that request drawings the most, giving them the ability to search for drawings and print them from PDF. The solution cost may look something like this:
Please note all figures used are examples only and may be dated.
Cost to automate Printing a Drawing/Creating PDF’s
2 x Days Scoping consultancy = £2400
5 x Vault Professional = £3525
3 x Vault for Office = £525
5 x Days implementation consultancy = £6000
Now, it’s important to remember that the licenses will be recurring so the cost for the first year will be higher than the second and then there is the option of 3 year price deals, if they are available, to reduce license costs.
Total cost year 1: £12450
Total yearly cost recurring: £3525
Time to ROI: < 2 Years
Not convincing enough?
The ROI is there but it is good to remember that now that a Vault Professional is in place, there are more options to get some of those other admin tasks sorted out at the same time. Tasks like filling out title blocks and revision tables can be removed in the same process, thus maximizing the return on the Vault licenses.
In conclusion, it is easy to find a business case to automate admin tasks within the design office. If you can find a solution to address multiple issues at the same time, then even better! If you would like to have a discussion on how we can help make your ‘simple’ tasks faster, then please reach out to us.