Drawing Review - What is your company process

[behindpropellers]

The company I work at has a rather lengthy review process for drawings. Nothing is done over email. Old fashioned paper and red ink. Now they want the person who puts the ink on to return it back to the originator, get it corrected and send it on. So essentially this creates a big paper trail and large amounts of time getting a single part out.

What does your company use for this sort of thing?

TIm

 

[fcsuper]

Who's redlining the drawings?

Matt Lorono
CAD Engineer/ECN Analyst
Silicon Valley, CA
Lorono's SolidWorks Resources
Co-moderator of Solidworks Yahoo! Group
and Mechnical.Engineering Yahoo! Group

 

[EngJW]

When we had an engineering department we had review boards and so many procedures. It was department policy that a drawing was never released until it was as perfect and free of mistakes as humanly (im)possible. As a result not much ever got released and folders and drawings were stacked up all over the place.

Now there are two people for an engineering department. I make all the drawings and send them right out without a second thought, and we get the parts in and the product out. Sometimes someone will call up about something not clear or they found a mistake, so I fix it and send them a revised drawing in less than a half hour.

Not the right way to do things but it works.

 

[TheTick]

I like paper for reviewing. It seems to engage more of the brain than on-screen review. On-screen seems to discourage thoughtful review.

 

[MadMango]

Drawings always need review for both standards adherence and design validity (and possibly manufacturability and cost). Whether you use a crayon, lipstick or electrons, mark-ups are normally required and are red. Its a good practice for the Marker to returns prints to the Markee, its a form of reinforcement and training.

Everywhere I have worked, there have been checkers. Some much better than others, some not so qualified. Regardless of their caliber, they find things that need correction or clarification and at the end of the day this helps to ensure that we get what we were expecting.

"Art without engineering is dreaming; Engineering without art is calculating."

Have you read faq731-376 to make the best use of Eng-Tips Forums?

 

[behindpropellers]

Mango-

I'm not looking to eliminate checks and balances. Just smooth the operation to make it hassle free and time efficient.

Tim

 

[pierdesign]

I have worked with various procedures, coporate and consulting environment.

Very rigourous: per project dedicated drawing checker, multi-color highlighting of every drawing element, drawing updates with every checker-highlight re-highlighted that it had been updated. Seperate checklist(s) filled out by both checker and drafter.

Relaxed: check your own, but have a verifiable trail or copy of those checks.

Over years with both systems they both work just as well. The difference being I would recommend the rigourous process for large projects, multiple designers producing many drawings of certain complexity.

 

[BARM]

To behindpropellers,

Yes that's the way we did things in our office. I'll assume "send it on" means the drawing has now been approved and issued, say to the shop floor.

We all worked in the same office so transporting drawings wasn't an issue.

Our main issue was with the checker(senior designer)getting a backlog of designs to check. He was old school and would go over every detail with a fine comb which was good until it got down to a difference of opinions (think drafting styles).

 

[MadMango]

In regards to streamlining the process, I doubt there is much that can be done with an initial release of a document, as the thoroughness of checking will depend on the Checker and their mood at the time. Engineering Changes should move through the system quicker, as everything shouldn't need to be rechecked, only the effected areas. Of course this also depends on the scope of changes.

If you are in a prototyping stage, you may be able to circumvent the official checking process, given the designer/engineer is going to take responsibility of blame for components made according to a bad print.

The company I work at has a rather lengthy review process for drawings.

How does your current process differ from your past experiences? I've worked in architectural, medical device, manufacturing, and aerospace industries, I've only seen paper and red ink processes like the one you are posting about. Some of the good companies let the bottleneck exist and let the system work. Some of the bad companies throw ill-equipped resources at the bottleneck and make the problem worse (in terms of rejects and wasted money).

"Art without engineering is dreaming; Engineering without art is calculating."

Have you read faq731-376 to make the best use of Eng-Tips Forums?

 

[macPT]

I will try to describe how my company works.

For a new drawing, for example a new product, a drawing is considered ready for release after product prototyping, testing and pre-release validation. Until then, any reviews/revisons resulted from development stays inside R&D department.

So the validated drawing is then released, with no revision, to some departments, as needed. We keep track of the release on our ERP.

If someone detects a problem (an error, a new manufacturing process, a change in the related standards, change in the market), sends a review request to R&D with all needed data (a litle bit like an SPR for Solidorks). The review request can be originated inside R&D.

As the result of the review, the drawing can be revised (by R&D guys). If it's that the case, the revision and what was revised are registred in our ERP, and the new drawing is released, using A,B,C... identification, to those departments resgistred in the ERP.

The drawing release is, in fact, an e-mail notification that a certain new drawing/revision is available in the database.

It's a fairly straightforward process. I hope it can give you some ideas.

Regards

 

[drawoh]

behindpropellers,

How bad is it for anything to go wrong in your shop? Most things located behind propellers ought to be very reliable.

Design checkers ought to catch enough errors that the cost and time required for the checking is made up for by the lack of production and end use screw-ups. Somewhere, there is an optimal effort at design checking.

JHG