Small/Midsize Department Electronic Reference Data Organization

[SAITAETGrad]

Rather slow right now...

Our current means of storing all the vendor, OEM, and other reference data we use in our department would be best described as "helter skelter" as in buried within project files, miscellaneous files, networked personal computers, etc.

The current task is to come up with a system to organize all this information into a searchable reference depository. Ideally, someone relatively untrained or green could search by file name and content (where possible). Also, cost of implementation is a concern- can't require a lot of data entry. Some of this reference material is only used once...some once every few years...some multiple times a week.

I'm wondering how others might organize such data. Throw it away? Find as necessary? Organized with detailed procedures? Data mining search engines?

Any and all ideas/opinions/thoughts welcome.

 

[MadMango]

The cheapest route would be to place everything in one location on the network, settle on useful file names. This takes discipline. Then download the Everything search tool.

http://www.voidtools.com/

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

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

 

[ctopher]

Same as MM.
You can also download or create PDFs from manufacturers and put into folders by type/etc.

Chris
SolidWorks 10 SP4.0
ctopher's home
SolidWorks Legion

 

[YoungTurk]

We had 5S teams attack this problem with varying success within different organizations. The general concept was sound -
create a simple organization standard within a network folder,
write the standard down and publish it at the top level folder,
organize existing data to match the standard,
file future information per the standard.

Implementation and results were all over the map depending on how ambitious the standard was and how committed the users were. My suggestions is KISS for organiztion and emphasize getting everybody to use a single location for similar data (vendor data, specifications, memos, etc.).

 

[GregLocock]

How many documents are you talking about?


Cheers

Greg Locock


New here? Try reading these, they might help FAQ731-376

http://eng-tips.com/market.cfm?

 

[HDS]

a wiki can work for this but it has some overhead.