Enabling Process Automation with Technical Drawings

Industry Perspective
Written By Yedan Qian

Business leaders know that process automation is a crucial aspect of the future. In manufacturing industry, it means to streamline daily management and production activities, such as RFQ, pricing, production planning, inventory management, assembly, inspection, etc. These tasks and the handlings in between them can be mundane, repetitive, involving multiple departments, thus distract employees, delay sales, hold up delivery and eventually frustrate customers.

 

What if those tasks can be reduced or taken care of automatically?

What if data are feed into the system from the start, processed based on preset logics and flow fluidly through these processes without much human intervention? Many companies are longing for such solutions that promises improvement in speed, cost and customer satisfaction.

 

Important Data is Locked Away 

However, in tackling this new frontier of efficiency and potential, an obstacle exists for Machine Building industry to streamline the use of data - Technical Drawing. Any company attempting to extract data from Technical Drawings soon realizes the challenge is much bigger than it appears. Technical Drawings appear in different formats with complex visual structures. It is beyond the capability of generic OCR (Optical Character Recognition), leaving companies unable to utilize many process automation solutions without costly manual efforts.

Virtual Key to the Process Automation 

Using Werk24’s TechRead API, the path to freeing data trapped in Technical Drawings is wide open. Employing its Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) capabilities, information in Technical Drawings is made available to companies, enabling Process Automation prospects, creating rich, actionable meta data to feed into existing systems and other RPA solutions. With Werk24’s Technology, companies can 

  • Access the Title Block, including Drawing IDs, Designation, Material, and General Tolerance 

  • Extract Measures, including Nominal Size, Tolerance (Fit & Deviation), Thread, and Chamfer 

  • Capture GD&Ts, including the full range of GD&T frames 

  

Valuable Benefits to the Client 

The advantages of employing Werk24’s technology are numerous, as the automated processes of transformation and digitisation are applied to Engineering Drawings and their stored information: 

  • Costs are lowered for accessing data 

  • Tedious manual labour is removed from the extraction process 

  • The entire process is sped up, ensuring an efficient playing field for gaining new customers and managing production pipeline 

 

Process Automation Applications

Process automation is an integral part of the Machine Building Industry’s future. With all production and pricing critical data extracted at the entry point, now all manufactures and platforms can automate the internal processes:

  • Processing RFQ (production feasibility check, anonymization, instant pricing)

  • Importing to ERP and PPS

  • Building digital archiving

 

Werk24’s technology now is available through API requests and returns data in JSON format. We are also looking into RPA integrations to benefit wider range of customers in the future.

Yedan Qian
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