Dave,
There are lots of ideas. Once you have a system you will wonder how you survived without it. Our system is about ten years old and home brewed. We looked at many and came to the conclusion that one that matched our 'system' was better than changing to another system.
It took us about five years to convert from pencil to CAD with document control. Part of that was scanning 250,000 drawings as well as generating 10,000 new CAD and 10,000 revisions each year. Our print room generates nearly 400,000 square feet of paper each year.
Our proven savings is in excess of $1M per year. Cost spread over time to implement including all CAD costs and Oce print machine $1.3M. Early years were costly but we were losing on average one CAD file each day before document management.
Tell us more and maybe we can make better suggestions.
Mike
Mike