Case study: Quality certificates at Linde

In this case study we demonstrate the challenges experienced by plant component manufacturing at Linde engineering, in the audit, management and compilation of quality certificates. We look at how a solution was established using a SEAL system with document management bar code recognition, as old documents filed under ArchiveLink were easily migrated into the DMS, and we look at the advantages this project brought for Linde engineering.

The initial Situation

As a plant manufacturer and manufacturer of pressure vessels, Linde Engineering is obliged to comply with various regulations (e.g. Pressure Equipment Directive – PED, AD 2000, ASME). These rules and regulations prescribe material records in the form of test certificates for pressure-bearing components. Certificate requirements are communicated to the supplier when ordering. The certificates must be provided by the supplier at the latest, when receiving the goods, in the form of PDF files or paper. Depending on the size of the plant, this can be up to several hundred quality certificates. Quality certificates are managed in an SAP system by Linde Engineering, from goods receipt, to production, to delivery. The SAP standard only offers the ArchiveLink interface in the record master record for file storage, which has certain disadvantages. There is neither version control, nor the ability to stamp certificate files on release, or to link them to respective SAP material batches. In addition, automated compilation of all quality certificates required for a plant is not feasible. The management of certificates, including review and approval, as well as their composition for delivery, is therefore time-consuming, and a manual process binding together many resources is also prone to error.

Read how these problems were solved in our case study.