California Prison Industry Authority (CALPIA) is a self-supporting, customer-focused business that reduces recidivism, increases prison safety, and enhances public safety by providing offenders with productive work and training opportunities.
Challenges:
The furniture division of CALPIA needed improved quality control of delivered products to their customers, leading to higher operating costs for the division. Shipping costs on returns were high, and delays in fulfilling replacements were causing less than positive experiences for their customers.
Project Goals:
CALPIA decided a top priority was to achieve ISO 9000 certification for better quality control, and they needed a cost-effective way to implement an engineering change order system to accomplish that goal. A longer-term goal was to integrate the system with CALPIA’s ERP system to further leverage their bills of materials so their accounting and purchasing departments could track costs associated with the final deliverable products.
Solutions:
Hagerman & Company proposed the implementation of Autodesk Vault Professional, focusing on the engineering change order process to solve the quality control issue with manufacturing and to help management meet their goal of ISO 9000 certification. Hagerman and Company provided consultation services on workflows, configuration, installation, and Inventor and Vault Professional training for 20-25 users in their design center and factory supervisors. Administrator training was provided to CALPIA’s IT staff so they could maintain the system themselves, including backups, updates, and upgrades. Two years after successfully implementing the engineering change process, Hagerman & Company provided a custom program/code to connect Vault Professional to CALPIA’s ERP system.
Business Outcomes:
By implementing Vault Professional engineering change order functionality, CALPIA has a process to catch mistakes early in the design process, improve quality control, and achieve ISO 9000 certification, one of CALPIA’s management’s top goals. As a result, customer satisfaction has improved, and shipping costs for returned items have drastically been reduced. Most importantly, they can now meet their customers’ expectations and positively enhance their experiences.
Conclusion:
Hagerman and Company’s fast-track process of discovery, statement of work, review, proposal, and scheduling was performed efficiently and quickly. The time from initial contact for possible solutions to full implementation was completed in less than four months.
Additional Story Details:
As a result of the CAD training Hagerman & Company provided to CALPIA, management saw the value and began exploring paths to give offenders ways to learn CAD. In 2015 they launched a Computer-Aided Design program, a certification within the Career Technical Education division that enables female offenders to learn Autodesk software. Graduates will work alongside CALPIA engineering staff to improve existing correctional industry product designs and to develop new products for CALPIA. The new certification program will also assist offenders in obtaining jobs upon parole in Architectural, Mechanical, or Engineering fields. This program is the first of its kind in the nation since it will be the only authorized Autodesk Training Center (ATC) housed at a state prison.
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