"Information Again," Feature Article, March 2008

information aging

The data stored in computers can remain as valuable as ever, but retrieving it becomes a challenge over time.

by Jean Thilmany, Associate Editor

Your company's most important data may also be its hardest to access. This information consists of the digital files created over the years by engineers. If companies don't have a plan in place to gain quick and easy access to this information, future engineering projects can suffer, according to a number of industry experts.

In industry parlance, this kind of older, business-critical information is referred to as legacy data. The legacy is tried technology, already paid for, that can serve future projects or answer future questions when they arise. No company would willingly throw away that kind of investment. Forgetting the past can doom a company to the expense of having to do a lot of work over again.

Ensuring easy access to legacy data can be a nightmare, however. After all, in this age of continued software upgrades, digital information becomes outdated in months. Keeping older versions available can be a job unto itself.

In the engineering world, legacy documents often take the form of CAD files or blueprints. They aren't referred to every day. But when they are needed, they're needed right away. Perhaps an automaker or aerospace company keeps equipment in operation and needs to check original design data on a component. Maybe engineers are working on an upgrade to a machine and need to see why a part was designed in a particular way.

Or, take the case of defense contractors, which are often required by the federal government to warehouse design data and information for a particular period of time, often decades, said Ken Tashiro, vice president and chief operating officer at Elysium Inc. in Southfield, Mich. His company helps ensure that older CAD information can still be easily read by updated systems.

Engineering companies design a multitude of products, some of which have short lives in the marketplace, while others keep selling for years. Successful products usually remain so because they receive constant improvement. Products that are retired today may have parts that will prove useful in a product during the next year or next decade.

According to Tashiro, the big question about all that design and manufacturing data is: "How can you make sure it's accessible to future generations so they don't have to essentially work backward to get to the information?"

Managers can be tempted to print out all documents and store them in some kind of vault. But who has the room? And such a paper-based system would need an archival method all its own.

Off the Mainframe

To get up-to-the-minute access to older engineering information, managers need to be ever vigilant about ensuring that legacy data exists in a format which can be easily understood and accessed. Today a number of new software applications and technologies can help even those companies with seemingly the most outdated of computers, the mainframe.

Some engineering-related companies, like large defense contractors or aerospace companies, still warehouse pertinent design information on mainframe computers. In fact, around 70 percent of all U.S. business data today resides on mainframes, according to an annual survey conducted by BMC Software Inc. of Houston. The company sells administrative and management tools for the mainframe.

Engineering-related companies may house design information about their aircraft, satellites, or components still in use today. Cadam, an early CAD system developed in the 1970s by Lockheed Corp., was created to run on a mainframe. Not until the early 1980s did CAD systems like AutoCAD and Catia, which run on personal computers, make the scene, said Jon Hirschtick, who co-founded SolidWorks. That company released its own now-successful CAD application in 1995.

Many companies have invested large sums of money in their mainframes and aren't looking to give them up, said Mike Moser, production management director for BMC's mainframe business. A mainframe can't be replaced without great cost and without putting information at risk. These companies, too, are looking for a way to easily access older information.

Keep Info Current

In recent days—meaning the past few years—software developers have introduced new ways in which companies can speedily retrieve legacy information, whether it's stored in a format for a desktop computer or a mainframe. These methods involve migrating or upgrading information or installing middleware, all at some cost.

Some companies, for instance, may choose to move legacy data to the open XML format and use a number of software tools, such as database query methods, to quickly retrieve information. XML is a relative of the hypertext markup language used to create Web pages. Because XML can describe many different types of data, the language is uniquely qualified to share all types of data across all types of digital systems, according to John O'Connor of Vistagy Inc. in Waltham, Mass. The company sells CAD products for composite material.

Legacy documents that can be written into XML can include blueprints, CAD designs, change orders, materials specifications, assembly instructions, and cost estimates.

One way to make legacy information accessible via the Web features the latest buzzword: service-oriented architecture. This type of middleware can allow the engineer to access resources via a networked interface without the cost and disruption involved with replacing older systems.

SOA links all these systems in an interconnected web. It isn't a technology in and of itself; rather, it's a way to loosely couple a company's installed and varied software systems, regardless of platform or protocol.

It acts as a universal translator that transforms the many proprietary protocols currently in use around the world into a standards-based universal interface, said Bernd Patzold, the chief executive officer at Prostep AG of Darmstadt, Germany, which makes product data integration software.

The Future Looks Different

Still another fly in the legacy ointment is information created today on systems sure to be outdated in the not-too-distant future. Couple that with continued software updates—which threaten to make digital designs created on earlier versions of the same application inaccessible—and engineering companies have a real problem.

"In the future—one to five decades out—the person who created the design won't be around, the operating system it was created with will have changed, the CAD company will change, even the computer's power supply could be different," Tashiro said.

"The best way to keep your information is to get a machine with your CAD system on it, put it in a room, hermetically seal it, have a backup power supply and a bunch of energy ready, and keep the engineers who worked on that program healthy so they can tell you what to do," he added.

Tashiro is in the business of serving up an alternative. Although many things change, some stay the same, he said. NASA, for instance, will continue to use the Pro/Engineer CAD system and Boeing the Catia system. According to Tashiro, companies can put their platforms to work for them by ensuring that upgraded applications can read information created by earlier versions and that designs created in one CAD system can be read by another.

Tashiro's company, Elysium, contracts with clients—notably, a large Japanese automaker that houses close to 5,000 CAD seats. The automaker obviously has a particular stake in maintaining legacy CAD files. Elysium saves CAD designs in a neutral file format that can be read by any CAD system. This ensures that future CAD users can always access them, Tashiro said.

On another note, engineering companies bring in Elysium to ensure that their current CAD information can be fully read by each new, upgraded version. Sounds like a no-brainer, but sometimes software developers miss a detail that will let a new version read some of the geometry created earlier.

"I don't know anyone that updates every single CAD file because that's too much work," Tashiro said. "If you want to use a pump modeled in release 14 and now it's release 18, you're either going to have to remodel it or put your faith in the CAD vendor to make sure it has backwards capability."

A service like Elysium's takes some of the faith out of that process.

Protecting legacy data in this complex digital age is downright difficult. But managers need to keep on top of it. Just ask that engineer searching for a design first made in 1971.

learned on the job

Many engineering managers periodically lose one of their most important sources of legacy data: the body of knowledge their engineers have accrued over the years.

Managers can forget that vital engineering knowledge about past projects exists outside written or digitally stored documents. Retiring or departing engineers take a lot of knowledge with them when they leave, said John Borchardt, a Houston-based consultant. He's found his niche by helping companies protect that knowledge.

A retiring engineer may be the only person who knows why a part has such an esoteric curve. Should the new person find the curve frivolous and decide to do away with it, he or she may find out in a hurry, at great cost, the reason for the curve.

To keep this kind of valuable information from walking out the door, some companies now conduct a new kind of interview in tandem with the exit interview.

These interviews are meant to capture what Borchardt called a retiree's soft knowledge. This information can be passed to his or her replacement and to future employees, Borchardt said. These interviews aren't intended to gather technical information. Rather, Borchardt gets managers and executives to talk about day-to-day life on the job, their so-called soft knowledge. He conducts these soft-knowledge interviews with departing managers and executives—many with a mechanical engineering background—for large oil and chemical companies in Houston.

"We get at how they got their jobs done, why they were productive, what methods they've come up with that are especially effective, who are the people and their network that really helped them do their jobs," he said. "You can also get into their accomplishments and what they've achieved."

Certain industries, like oil and parts of the IT sector, have embraced these types of interviews because they often need to bring in top-level employees from outside the field, Borchardt said. New employees have absolutely no knowledge of the industry they're stepping into.

Promoting from within is difficult. "In oil—where they didn't hire for 20 years during a slowdown in the industry—and in mainframe computers, which kids don't want to get into today, the younger generation isn't around to step in," he said.

Regardless of industry, new hires can have a hard time getting up to speed and will appreciate the experience a longstanding departing employee has left them with.

Here's how the process works.

Borchardt spends around four hours interviewing departing managers and executives, many of whom are mechanical engineers. He uses a technique called mind mapping, which is used by business professionals, writers, and artists alike to flesh out and follow thoughts in a nonlinear style. He creates a diagram—by hand and with the help of some software—that uses balloon-like graphics to visualize thoughts.

He projects a mapping diagram on screen in the room to help guide the interviews. This also projects a dialog box so employees can follow Borchardt as he types up their responses.

"They see the thing taking shape and it helps them structure their own responses and essentially say, 'I need to bring this up because it's not on your mind map,' " he said.

He next writes up a report about 20 pages long that the new executive or manager can refer to when needed. The report includes organizational charts, an appendix, and the mind map itself. Future employees can refer to the information at any time.

One other benefit Borchardt noted: Departing employees have nothing to lose by speaking ill of their companies. The right-thinking business can use this to its advantage.

"You can get into strategic areas like what has the company done well during your tenure and what they need to do to improve," he said. "I can ask, 'From your viewpoint, what should the company do or not do in the future?' "

Managers shouldn't be threatened by responses. Instead, they should use them to ponder and improve operations. After all, a company willing to retain soft knowledge is already doing a lot right, Borchardt said.