EvoBus Česká republika (hereinafter only EvoBus ČR), like most manufacturing companies, generates vast amounts of documentation relating to the manufacturing processes and to business and administrative activities of the company. Increasing documentation volume results in increased time demands and costs relating to its management and recording. IXTENT’s solution enabled EvoBus ČR to easily and efficiently manage various types of documents and information contained therein in electronic form. Manufacturing process is efficiently documented thanks to a mobile application.

Customer

EvoBus GmbH is the largest European subsidiary of Daimler AG. It is responsible for all group’s activities in the area of bus transport around Europe. At the end of 1990s, the group management decided about EvoBus’ entry into the Czech Republic and about establishing EvoBus Česká republika s.r.o. subsidiary with business seat in Prague. The manufacturing plant is located in Holýšov near Pilsen.

EvoBus Česká republika is responsible for sale and servicing of Mercedes-Benz and Setra buses in the Czech Republic. In addition to that, the company manufactures chassis segments and basic structures for almost all types of Mercedes-Benz and Setra buses.

EvoBus Česká republika employs over 600 employees in the Czech Republic.

Initial Situation

Paper documents managed by EvoBus ČR were maintained for legislative and internal documentation purposes and archived mainly in paper form in large physical archives. This required considerable financial costs – operating, maintenance, and securing costs, human resources, etc. Retrieval of individual documents and information from such document was lengthy and ineffective, documents also had to be shared between both EvoBus ČR workplaces – Prague and Holýšov – whenever necessary.

EvoBus ČR thus looked for a solution that would make the entire process of documents creation, management, sharing, and archiving more efficient.

Solution

Area I – digitization of business and financial documents, their archiving in DMS

Cooperation with EvoBus ČR started in 2011 when EvoBus ČR approached IXTENT with a request for provision of a documents digitization solution and an electronic document management system (DMS) which would manage documents like invoices, orders, sales/vehicle documentation, including the coverage of processes relating to these documents by a workflow tool.

The project included paper documents transfer into electronic form (scanning), subsequent processing of electronic documents in internal information systems (mainly in DMS and SAP), and subsequently their secure and trusted electronic archiving. The electronic archive was integrated with the services of the First Certification Authority (První certifikační autorita – I. CA) in order to ensure the recency of timestamps attached to the electronic documents.

The DMS solution also included automatic reception and sending of messages through data mailboxes using a special server component (IXTENT ISDS connector) and subsequent processing and archiving of data messages in internal information systems.

The entire solution supplied by IXTENT has considerably increased the efficiency and speed of paper documents processing due to limiting their physical movement and processing within the company, increased the quality of output documents, saved time and costs required for their processing, improved their security, and last but not least provided better control over data flows.

Digitization using the DMS also contributed to improved categorization/classification of documents thus achieving a greater degree of stored data relevance as well as easier access to required information (reporting, retrieval, etc.).

The common effort resulted into a single state-of-the-art and universal technological platform with tools capable of covering both current and future requirements of EvoBus ČR on professional work with electronic documents.

Area II – mobile application for production data collection

Common discussion about new trends in mobile applications and their utilization in the production process started in 2014. The aim was to replace some paper documents used for production data recording by a mobile application that would enable proper documentation of the production process in line with the current requirements of EvoBus ČR.

The mobile application designed by IXTENT enables the manufacturing personnel to record measured data into electronic forms using tablets. The application alerts them of any excessive/insufficient values and may initiate a remedial action – for example send a task to other manufacturing personnel to add certain substance so that the measured parameters return into normal.

After measurement completion, the application creates a PDF record with measurement results which is archived in the existing DMS.

This is an entirely web based responsive application based on HTML 5 technology. This concept guarantees that the application will be consistent and user friendly regardless of the chosen display device, operating system, or browser.

The mobile production application facilitates administrative actions connected with the production process and ensures strict compliance with the manufacturing procedures and the standardization of their documentation.

Summary

IXTENT’s solution provided EvoBus ČR with easier access to information required for production management and enabled secure and automated processing and archiving of electronic documents.

The solution for management, creation, and distribution of statements and reports enables the company to track all important performance indicators and helps to ensure that all required information is available to right people at the right time.

The mutually beneficial cooperation between both companies continues and develops. There are plans regarding the mobile application solution extension to cover other production areas or Quality Assurance. As a part of the OpenText platform utilization, which offers broad possibilities, there are plans regarding implementation of additional document agendas and related processes including the possibility of their geographic expansion within the EvoBus Group. This incremental method of implementation reduces the total costs of ownership (TCO) split among individual document agendas and the platform utilization becomes more cost effective.