James Jones Company was founded in the early 1890's by James Jones, a trained machinist and craftsman who had emigrated from England just prior to founding Jones. In its early years, Jones manufactured all types of bronze products, including bronze candelabras, casket handles and mausoleum doors, although valves were the predominate product line.
In 1926, Jones built its first bronze fire hydrant at the request of the Fire Chief of Monrovia, California. The Jones bronze wet barrel hydrant remains the preferred fire hydrant in most parts of California. Today, Jones remains the only bronze foundry offering a full line of waterworks products on the west coast.
After spending years drawing traditional component diagrams on paper and tracking files in cabinets, the company needed a new computerized tracking system for different diagrams of components.
Similar to many industrial companies, engineers and other employees had to physically retrieve diagrams from file cabinets. This method proved to be an expensive, time consuming and frustrating process. It also resulted in less productivity since employees had to wait for a particular diagram if it had already been checked out by another employee.
James Jones engineers wanted to alleviate this problem and created electronic versions of drawings using an AUD Cut program. The old hard copy diagrams were scanned by the James Jones engineering department and saved in a PDF (Portable Document Format) following a specific file naming convention.
James Jones Company petitioned ONTRIX Solutions, Inc. to create a tracking system for the PDF files. The challenge for ONTRIX Solutions, Inc. was to create a user-friendly and faster way to track these PDF files.
Working closely with the James Jones engineering department and technical team, ONTRIX Solutions, Inc. built a tracking system where all the PDF files would get added to a database automatically making them easy to track. James Jones was elated with the results and noted that ONTRIX Solutions Inc. exceeded their expectations. The James Jones Company Intranet (internal communication) was set up by ONTRIX Solutions, Inc., which resulted in not only a user-friendly and faster way of tracking diagrams but a complete intranet where different departments of the company (Sale & Marketing, HR, Engineering) could communicate and retrieve all necessary forms from one centralized location.
ONTRIX Solutions, Inc. also worked on the James Jones Company web site design, a user-friendly site with clear navigations that allow all company employees and manufacturing shop workers to access diagrams electronically. With this new system, employees have the option to view, download, and print documents as well as report errors or issues discovered in diagrams to the Engineering department.
Additionally, ONTRIX Solutions, Inc. web consultants developed a customized search engine to help employees find the exact diagram.