SAPERION Case study - SIEMENS Archive

SAPERION case study
Siemens AG:
What happens today, belongs to history tomorrow – and becomes part of SAPERION
The challenge
· Access to all historical documents of the Siemens group
· Highlighting of the search terms
The solution
· A central archiving solution in the Siemens group archive
· Search from all subsidiaries in various countries via a flexible SAPERION interface
SIEMENS
The user approaches the Siemens archive, one of the largest and oldest business archives in Germany, using a SAPERION interface: the right search terms of some mouse clicks and the user is provided several aspects of the 160 years of Siemens history: 400,000 historical photos, 3,000 films, recordings and tapes, four kilometers of shelves containing records and documents and 17,000 exhibits. The members of the association of German business archivists were amazed when they held a conference at Siemens in May 2007. There, they saw what today’s possibilities are in the field of archiving whenever state-of-the-art software is used.
Since 2003, SAPERION has been applied to the Munich Siemens archive that was founded exactly 100 years ago. There, the system ensures access to all documents that so far were stored in the archive data pool. It permits to conduct the rapid and selective search from your computer. Selected archived information can be immediately displayed in the original layout” information can be searched using the full-text search option.
Every detail from corporate history can be searched within seconds
The huge historical collection is not only intended to be used for internal purposes but is also available to the public. Every day, the seven staff members in the archive receive requests from scientific historians, journalists, private persons or from people organizing exhibitions from all over the world about even quite unusual details of the long corporate history. “Lately, someone wanted to know, for instance, when Siemens dealt with air conditioning technology for the first time.” Ute Schniedermeier, Document Manager at Siemens Corporate Archives – that is how the archive is called – recalls. “By means of the thesaurus functionality available in SAPERION and due to the combination of the right search terms with Boolean algebra we found out quite soon: In 1876, company founder Werner von Siemens wrote about air conditioning in his room in a letter addressed to his brother.” In order to make e.g. historical correspondence available in digital form, we first of all had to copy the documents that were written either by hand or by using a typewriter. This is necessary because many of the documents could not be scanned. The texts generated in this way were combined with describing attributes and then were gradually integrated into the archive as files. The original scripts, among them 8,000 hand-written letters of the two Siemens brothers, are stored in air-conditioned storerooms at the Siemens Corporate Archive site at the Munich Oskap-von-Miller-Ring. In order to protect them, they are touched only in exceptional cases.
17,000 Siemens products –photos taken from every side
Pictures were taken from starting from the needle telegraph developed in 1847 to the first legendary Siemens radio from 1924 to the first personal computer by Siemens. Subsequently, the pictures and the respective describing attributes were integrated into the SAPERION archive. Photos, graphics, paintings or other image are available in three quality levels: 72 dpi for displaying them in the internet, 300 dpi in the jpg format for sending them via email and 300 dpi as tif file for long-term storage and for use in high gloss printing. The films are yet only available as descriptions.
The Siemens Corporate Archives as the historical archive on the one side and the individual registers with the current documents in the corporate units on the other side are separated using specific archival criteria. “We at Siemens Corporate Archives incorporate everything that meets the legal record retention periods, that is no longer needed in the current fiscal year and which has the required documentation value.”, Ute Schniedermeier explains. Of course, there are as well important current documents that can be integrated into document stock even today. This comprises circular letters, press releases, Website content or Siemens magazines. Scanning of these documents is not necessary because they are delivered already in digital form.
Every year, 1500 to 2000 requests on average get to the team of Corporate Archives by e-mail. In former times, exhibition organizers or museum managers had to travel long distances to Munich-Perlach in order to view and select exhibits whenever they planned to borrow some of them. Alternatively, staff members of the archive had to send photos for decision guidance. Today, this process takes place electronically. “If someone plans to borrow household exhibition I just enter the respective criteria – category and time period – into SAPERION”, archivist Alexandra Kinter explains. “As a result, I receive a PDF list containing all characteristics of the product including photos. Then, I can send the list via e-mail and interested people can conveniently select the right items while sitting at their desks.” In 2006, Siemens appliances for 40 exhibitions worldwide were selected in this way.
Ute Schiedermeier and her colleagues can thus not only respond to all kinds of inquires a lot faster than before but scientific users can also take advantage of the software. In a visitors’ room of the Siemens archive, they can search documents and exhibits using SAPERION.
SAPERION permits highlighting search terms
Electronic archiving or automated archiving by means of a punchcard has been an issue at Siemens Corporate Archives since 1969. All previous systems, thought, were proprietary developments and were neither able to withstand the increasing data quantities over nor to meet the higher requirements on software and hardware in the long run. In 2003, several reasons militated in favor of the SAPERION solution: First of all, the system does not store the documents in a directory but rather in an encrypted way. In this way, confidential data is protected against unauthorized access. A second reason for the SAPERION system was the possibility to conduct SQL full-text search inquiries, where the search terms are highlighted in the bitmaps scanned. Thus, in contrast to Google, search terms are marked in the partly extensive newspaper articles and business correspondence in SAPERION. In this way, the right part can be found quite easily. “Full-text search is our daily business”, Ute Schiedermeier explains. “and highlighting is a significant feature in order to get immediate results.”
Integration of subsidiaries in other countries are in the pipeline
The capabilities of SAPERION regarding the management of access authorizations are of special significance whenever decentralized archives of the Siemens units are to be integrated. Siemens Corporate Archives has the right to give instructions and also provides consulting services to the archive on medical engineering in Erlangen, to the archives of the gas turbine station in Berlin, to Siemens VDO and to the national organizations in Austria and Switzerland. This means: Original documents will always stay on –site whereas digital copies and the according attributes are stored centrally at the SAPEIRON server in Munich. There, staff members determine who is permitted to access which documents. Once the first English-speaking subsidiary is connected to the system – in autumn 2007, the archive stock in India will be established and connected – the flexible interface of SAPERION will prove to be indispensable because in this case, it is adjusted on-site in order to meet search requirements.