Philadelphia, PA-based, Kingsbury Inc., is a manufacturer of tilting pad fluid film thrust bearings, used in turbines for power generation, oil and gas refineries, marine propulsion systems, and all types of rotating machinery.
Kingsbury serves a customer base of equipment manufacturers whose machines need to keep pace with the demand for faster speeds, heavier loads, improved performance, and dependability in challenging conditions.
Forward looking Kingsbury demands high quality and accuracy in its production process with an eye toward automated efficiency, thus the application of CNC machines with robotics. In 2003, they introduced Doc-Trak™, a premium, best-in-class document management software module that works in tandem with their CloudSuite Industrial (SyteLine), ERP software solution.
More recently in 2018, Kingsbury’s management team realized there was a tremendous need to automate the entire shop, recognizing Doc-Trak’s ability to help the company lead its industry and build a strong future. So it came to be that Kingsbury provided every work center throughout the entire shop with a PC implementing the following enterprise-wide electronic document tracking benefits:
- Gained instant access to documents, such as drawings, photos containing dimensions, specifications and packaging visuals.
- Reduced paper costs including associated expenses such as copying, distributing and making changes to documents.
- Improved product quality supported by revision-specific paperless documents.
- Increased operating efficiencies driven by online, real-time electronic documentation.
- Enabled engineers to meet market challenges with innovative problem-solving technology.
- Responded to customer needs for improved power density, increased speeds and enhanced efficiency.
- Simplified training with Doc-Trak’s intuitive and highly visual design.
In the January 15, 2020, article in Assembly Magazine, Kingsbury management explained how Doc-Trak had improved the company’s engineering capabilities, product innovation, as well as aftermarket services and support.
Every workstation in the Kingsbury plant has a PC with Doc-Trak installed,
says Jim Camillo of Assembly Magazine. This provides workers with real-time access to documents like drawings, specifications, product photos with dimensions, and packaging images. Such access increases the efficiency of engineers and non-engineers by ensuring that they can always view the latest version of a document, with all revisions included.
Camillo also states that Kingsbury enjoys the cost saving benefits provided by Doc-Trak that accompany the document automation, thanks to eliminating document copying, manual distribution, alterations and storage. Plus, Doc-Trak’s intuitive and user-friendly visual design, makes it easy to create worker training materials.
Management especially likes that the software stores all customer documents—including purchase orders, shipping notices, automatic order verifications and acknowledgements, engineering calculations and invoices—in electronic file folders,
says Camillo. This eliminates the need for customer-service reps to find, open and refile paper documents, further enhancing efficiency.
Everyone at The Lake Companies is very proud to hear about the success our customers have with our applications, especially so when being recognized by a publication such as Assembly Magazine. Kingsbury has obviously made great strides to improve their internal operations, saving them time, money and eliminating unnecessary tasks. We congratulate them for their success.
