Case Studies

Lehigh Cement Company Achieves Faster Turn Around Time On Project Completion Using CONTEX Scanners

Lehigh Cement Company has served the construction industry in North America for more than 100 years as a producer of high quality Portland, blended, specialty cements and construction materials. Lehigh cements are widely used by ready-mix concrete suppliers and for numerous highway, architectural, industrial and marine applications. Lehigh is fully owned by HeidelbergCement of Germany and is affiliated with some of the world's most technically advanced cement operations and related construction materials activities. Lehigh employs approximately 2000 employees.

The engineering department at Lehigh Cement provides engineering services for both internal and external customers in order to increase the cement plants production capabilities. In order to provide effective services and archive project drawings, Lehigh needed the ability to scan large engineering drawings, then review them and correct them prior to customer use or archiving.

The Electronic Imaging Technician was tasked with finding a way to efficient handle this process. Through product and market research, review of various equipment capabilities and a careful analysis of cost, the technician chose an Contex scanner, with IDEAL scanning, indexing and imaging software packages. While focusing on the equipment capabilities, like scanning speed and resolution, as well as software add-ons and network interface capabilities, it was also imperative to keep cost low and, it was preferable to deal with one vendor in order to minimize support issues.

The Imaging Technician says, "The Contex scanner is very user friendly and the IDEAL software package allows the user to enhance the drawings being scanned, ensuring that a clear, sharp drawing is ready for customer use or archiving. "IDEAL set up and installed all the equipment, worked with our IT Department to ensure network inter-face and provided training for software, equipment, maintenance and operation. Having one knowledgeable vendor handle everything made for efficient transition to the new scanning system and software."

The Contex scanner reduces the amount of time spent scanning drawings and documents, which directly affects the amount of man-hours spent on each project. The IDEAL software allows the user to build a script that applies to all the drawings being scanned, which again reduces the amount of time the user spends looking at each drawing being scanned. This allows for a faster turn around time on project completion. With this rapid sequence of scan, save, eject drawing, move to the next drawing, Lehigh averages only about 30 seconds per drawing, which is a considerable time savings over previous methods of drawing archiving and review. This time saving, directly affects project turn around times and enables Lehigh to work faster, smarter and more cost effective.