When a manufacturer’s product line becomes more robust, there is a need for variable data software capable of sorting product information to intelligently create the appropriate documentation for an item. Without an automated system parsing through data, customer orders would take longer to ship. Not to mention, the chances of an error occurring would increase significantly, which could prove disastrous in the play equipment industry.
An industry pioneer encounters workflow issues
GameTime is a play equipment manufacturer dedicated to enriching the lives of children and communities with their quality, recreational products. Being a staple in the industry since 1929, they have spent a great deal of time enhancing and continue to refine their designing, engineering, and fabrication methods. Of course, over this period of time, their product line has grown to an impressive degree, and consequently, now there are multiple variations of product manuals to go along with each piece of equipment. It is of the utmost importance customers receive the proper documentation on their order, partially because it forms an integral part of the overall customer experience, and also clients should be made aware of all the safety and assembly precautions involved with a product. GameTime was having trouble creating these product manuals in a quick and accurate fashion, in addition to shipping these manuals with the correct order.
A little automation can go a long way in the manufacturing business
A single piece of equipment could require a series of manuals ranging from safety to assembly instructions. These product manuals are multi-part documents containing some standard information, and some product specific information, which is variable or susceptible to change. With the help of RJ Young*, we were able to determine the best course of action, and decided Reform VDP would be the best software fit. Reform VDP’s Designer would enable GameTime to insert specific automation commands for data population and document distribution. In other words, an individual order would be passed through our Reform VDP engine, it would be intelligently identified by the engine, and the corresponding sections of the manual would be populated with the correct information and then routed to a specific warehouse printer. Kristi McMahan, Document Control Coordinator for GameTime, goes on to say, “We were impressed with FabSoft and RJ Young’s ability to immediately identify our workflow needs and execute the ideal software solution. Reform VDP removed all the inefficiencies within our previous methods, and increased our processed capacity and speed. It has truly been an end to end workflow solution for us.” This degree of automation not only accelerated order processing speeds, but by removing the possibility of human error, GameTime could rest assured knowing the proper documentation was being delivered to the right customers.
Form editing means the end of obsolete documents
As mentioned above, Reform VDP’s routing and form enhancement capabilities, which greatly helped GameTime fine tune its product manual workflows, are derived from our form designer. Reform VDP’s Designer offered GameTime a simple way to adjust the appearance or automation commands of their company documents. Instead of re-creating a business document from scratch, scan the updated version of a document, open it up in our Reform VDP Designer to make some slight adjustments, and re-insert the document back into its appropriate workflow. It is a quick, intuitive process, and business documents are free to evolve and change as needed without affecting the real-time flow of business, or having to waste time redesigning and automating a form all over again.
Reform VDP has a lower total cost of ownership
Business software is not only judged by its effectiveness in the workplace, but also by the cost of operating such technology. In the long run, is it a worthwhile investment keeping a software solution active if its maintenance expenses supersede its initial purchase cost? GameTime’s existing VDP set-up was not only cumbersome, but expensive to maintain. Conversely, Reform VDP requires little IT maintenance after installation and GameTime was able to reduce print costs associated with their original VDP solution because now they can print designed forms on regular printing paper. Previously, a special kind of paper stock had to be purchased in order to produce certain manuals.