Archive of Company Drafts, Engineering Files to Be Recorded and Converted for CAD Compatibility 

Gulfstream has begun the time-consuming, frustrating process of digitizing its vast collection of paper records held at its company headquarters in Savannah, Georgia. 

The company had, like many sitting on old paper and photographic records, procrastinated the tremendous job of recording, cataloging, and labeling vital but aged information until recent developments from its records department created a newer, more streamlined system better suited to preserving them. The new database system will "make those important records easy to access and to ensure every detail is preserved for the future," according to Gulfstream brass. 

The Gulfstream engineering vault looks far more like a hypothetical rendition of the Alexandrian library than a blueprint storage closet, holding more than 70 years of carefully archived and hand-drawn designs for every piece of Gulfstream aircraft ever designed. While the romance of paper records hearkens back to the golden age of aviation, long-serving aircraft require constant upkeep and maintenance, and producing new replacement parts from hand-sketched prints can be a time-consuming, difficult affair. Gulfstream's archivists are beginning an effort to record, copy, and upload the entirety of the collection, including older Grumman aircraft designs, in order to convert the parts to CAD files and machine-readable PDFs. The new Aircraft Information Retrieval System will lay the groundwork for their systems in perpetuity, greatly easing the troublesome aspects of referencing vintage parts information for reproduction or alteration. 

Sheryl Bunton, senior vice president and chief information officer at Gulfstream has been overseeing the moving parts necessary to complete the project while maintaining the high level of organization order in the department. “There are hundreds of thousands of documents, including many of the original drawings from the very early days of Grumman and Gulfstream. We have incredibly detailed records, but none of them were easily searchable,” said Bunton. “We launched a new project to convert all of the records with associated CAD files along with many documents to machine readable PDFs, creating a searchable database. This new system will save our engineering, manufacturing and customer support professionals thousands of working hours.”

FMI: www.gulfstream.com