Metalmaker Goes Paperless: IBM Document Solution Saves Wise Alloys Time, Money

Metalmaker Goes Paperless: IBM Document Solution Saves Wise Alloys Time, Money

Aluminum can stock manufacturer Wise Alloys has selected an electronic document solution based on an IBM server to improve productivity and reduce order information access from days to minutes. Previously, the company had been tracking their production manually, using a paper-based lot ticket system containing information on the customer specifications. After making a physical entry of each stage of production, employees had to gather the tickets each night and ship them to an offsite processing center. Wise Alloys generates more than 40,000 lot tickets annually, so this method proved to be error-prone and time-consuming.

IBM Advanced Business Partner RJS Software built the solution on a duplex scanner and their custom WebDocsâ„¢ imaging solution running on an IBM System i 520. The scanner rapidly copies both sides of each ticket and stores the images in a database that is accessible via the Web. Since the tickets are digitized, hardcopy storage is no longer needed. The entire external process of dispatching, keypunching and microfilming, along with its associated costs and time, has been eliminated.

“We found a solution and literally two hours later, we were scanning lot tickets,” said Gene Bendall, senior business systems analyst of Wise Alloys. “With the new paperless solution, we know exactly where a processing order is stored and can quickly access the information with the touch of a button. All customer order information can be accessed in minutes instead of days.”

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