The creation of a detailed engineering bid is the beginning of an integrated process that culminates in the successful delivery of the solution to the customer. By injecting a higher level of knowledge and automation into the proposal process, a telecommunications company has been able to automate many downstream processes, achieving significant cycle time reductions as a result.
Apprentice Systems co-founder Steve Strong has worked for years in the knowledge-based engineering arena, solving complex design and engineering problems with object-oriented tools. A firm believer in the value of visual interfaces as a means of simplifying complex inputs, he has been creating tools and solutions using Microsoft Visio since 1997. These tools make it possible to rapidly construct customized sales proposal systems and to automate downstream implementation systems. Strong put his experience and tools to work to significantly reduce effort and cycle time for a major telecommunications client.
A major telco had just completed a very successful project automating the configuration of consoles used in their 911 / Public Safety radio systems. The configuration tool they were using was traditional, form-based configuration software, and they used Visio to display the ongoing solution.
Pleased with the success of the Phase One project, they developed a much more ambitious vision - a sales proposal system that embraced all the relevant products that were part of the solution, with a visual front-end based on Visio. Apprentice Systems was brought in as a Visio expert to help build the user interface.
The vision of the telco team was a compelling one - a design document that originated during the sales effort, but then traveled throughout the entire organization, becoming richer and richer with knowledge as it passed. But the challenges the vision created were significant. In many cases, each object in the configuration needed to be represented by a different Visio shape, depending on the detail and level of interaction required at that point in the process.
It also became clear that the expansion of the project to include all products created the need for a higher level of configuration than their traditional, constraint-based configuration software was designed to handle. How would they size components based on the accumulated requirements from several lower-level configurations?
Apprentice Systems, originally brought in based on Visio expertise, demonstrated they had another area of expertise that was now critical to the project's success - knowledge management.
The Apprentice MentorTM software was used for shape generation and management throughout the application. Rules were created to describe how to create and place related shapes on different pages in the Visio document.
The Apprentice Engine is used to handle the more complex knowledge requirements such as auto-racking and high level configuration. The Engine also acts as middleware, moving data back and forth throughout the system. As a key team member says, "Apprentice is the 'caulk' for the system, holding it all together."
Apprentice Systems was handling all of the 2D visualization requirements in the solution, but the telco was also interested in a 3D representation. An important part of the system was the dispatch center where 911 calls came in and police and fire dispatch messages were sent out. Could Apprentice Systems do 3D interactive walkthroughs of the dispatch center showing the layout and furniture the company would be providing?
To get a state-of-the-art 3D simulation engine, Apprentice Systems teamed up with Global Majic, a Huntsville, Alabama company that specializes in doing simulations for the U.S. military. The Global Majic 3D control was integrated into the Apprentice software, with the Mentor supplying the critical third dimension knowledge required to translate 2D into 3D. As a result, the new sales proposal system generates realistic 3D walkthroughs of the proposed dispatch centers with the click of a mouse.
The telco now had a sales proposal system that automated a design and estimation process that used to take weeks, but the team didn't stop there.
The output from the proposal system was handed-off to the factory for detailed design, testing and system delivery. Previously, the factory team had received documents describing design specifications and the job quote. Now they were to receive rich Visio documents full of Apprentice-enabled shapes along with the associated knowledge base, including detailed equipment lists, preliminary racking diagrams and space planning drawings. This information, combined with another set of Apprentice tools, would enable the next level of automation.
The factory team had been using various drawing tools and CAD programs to draw floor plans and elevation drawings. Spreadsheets were used to manage the cable matrix, which documents how equipment is connected and the cables that are used. A new system is actually built and tested in a lab environment, and cable routes and lengths were calculated manually in this lab setting. A typical installation is quite complex, incorporating many racks filled with equipment and hundreds of cables.
The Racking and Cabling Apprentice was used to simplify the creation of floor plans and elevation drawings of equipment racks. The Cable Selector prompts the user through the creation of the cable matrix, learning how equipment is typically connected and saving that knowledge for future use. The advanced routing capabilities of the Racking and Cabling Apprentice are used to calculate optimal route paths through racks and cable trays in the 3D environment, calculating with great accuracy the lengths of 500 cables in a matter of minutes.
The automation of equipment layout and cable routing opened up yet another downstream opportunity for process improvement. Installation instructions for cabling were being provided via the creation of hundreds of CAD drawings showing equipment panels and stylized cable connections. Drawing creation was labor intensive and added weeks to the cycle time of the implementation process. Now that the Racking and Cabling Apprentice captured every step of cable routing electronically, a logical next step was to automate the creation of installation instructions. The Apprentice generates detailed routing instructions for each cable, including Visio drawings of the from/to equipment panels.
The accuracy of Apprentice routing and documentation requires accurate 2D representations of back and front equipment panels. To simplify the creation of Visio shapes containing Apprentice-enabled connector shapes, Apprentice Systems provides the Apprentice Content Creator, a tool that allows the user to drag and drop a generic equipment shape, add connectors and save the revised shape in a database for future use.
Most people intuitively accept the value of visualization as a communication device, understanding 'a picture is worth a thousand words' and that drawings can be used to quickly communicate complex ideas. But too often visualization is reserved for the communication of the output of a process, the idea to be sold, the final solution. Apprentice Systems believes that drawing is a better way to communicate from the beginning - a high quality, efficient way to collect requirements and to pass data from process step to process step. The telco experience demonstrates the potential for rich visual inputs to systematically improve a process and reduce cycle time.
The information contained in this document represents the current view of Apprentice Systems on the issues discussed as of the date of publication. Because Apprentice Systems must respond to changing market conditions, it should not be interpreted to be a commitment on the part of Apprentice Systems, and Apprentice Systems cannot guarantee the accuracy of any information presented after the date of publication.
This document is for informational purposes only. Apprentice Systems MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS DOCUMENT.
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