A maintenance coordinator cut log entry from 5 days to 20 minutes

The logs come in the way they are written on the floor: a date, a job, a technician, what was done to which machine. None of it is typed. Before, he went down the page line by line and typed each row himself. A batch of 20 pages took 3 to 5 days, and he runs 4 to 5 batches a month.

• Paper does not sort. A stack of handwritten logs can’t be filtered, totaled, or searched until somebody types it.
• The same days, every batch. Copying rows by hand took 3 to 5 days, 4 to 5 times a month.
• The company tool only reads. The plant provides Adobe Reader and nothing else, so he bought his own.

The scan goes in exactly as it was written and comes back as a spreadsheet, already in the order he wants. Reading the handwriting and keying it in, the part that used to take days, is no longer work he does himself.

• Paper becomes rows. A scan of handwritten logs comes back as an editable spreadsheet, not a picture.
• It arrives sorted. The order he wants is already there on download, not something he fixes after.
• Reading is not his job. The handwriting gets read for him, and he checks it instead of typing it.
• One batch, one upload. All 20 pages go up as a single file instead of page by page.

A 20-page batch of handwritten logs comes back as a sorted spreadsheet in 15 to 20 minutes. He checks the rows instead of typing them and corrects the few the handwriting trips up.