How Rochester Electronics Transformed IP Traceability with Soutron Corporate Archive SaaS

Manufacturing Archives Excellence

This success story synthesizes the work of the Archive Services Department at Rochester Electronics, led by Supervisor Meghan Turney and Archivist Jamie Thibeault from their session presentations at the Society of American Archivists (SAA) Conference in 2025.

Their presentations highlighted how the department digitally transformed the company’s “archival debt” and established performance metrics to prove the archive services department’s monetary value.

Strategic Objectives

Eliminate Archival Debt

Centralize and digitize decades of scattered traceability IP records into a unified, searchable format.

Enhance IP Findability

Implement a high-speed, item-level cataloging system to support engineering and trade compliance.

Quantify Departmental ROI

Establish a “Profit and Loss” metric to demonstrate the cost-savings of an in-house archival function.

Scalable Data Infrastructure

Leverage the Soutron Corporate Archive SaaS solution to streamline metadata management and provide a foundation for massive legacy data imports.

Key Outcomes

2.5 Million+ Records Digitally Archived: Successfully migrated legacy metadata, vastly increasing the pool of searchable intellectual property.
Improved Search Accuracy: Documentation findability in "Semi-Search" is trending toward a goal of >80% accuracy, reducing "no-bid" business risks.
Proven Financial Value: Demonstrated clear ROI by comparing in-house efficiency against the high costs of third-party archival vendors.
Optimized Cataloging: Established a robust archival workflow within the Soutron Corporate Archive SaaS solution, facilitating rapid search and retrieval of critical business assets.
The department established several metrics, including a unique "Profit and Loss Summary," to quantify its value and track progress.

Addressing Archival Digital Transformation Debt and Proving Value at Rochester Electronics

Rochester Electronics: Founded in 1981, the company specializes in manufacturing and distributing End of Life (EOL) semiconductors, preventing supply chain disruptions when original parts are discontinued.

The Archive Team: A small team of three (plus interns/co-ops) situated under the Design Technology Group. They operate a non-traditional, manufacturing-centric archive, utilizing the Soutron Archive database, prioritizing speed and item-level cataloging to serve engineering and business needs via the internal “Semi-Search” database.

As Rochester refines their digital archive strategies and controlled vocabularies, the Soutron Corporate Archive SaaS provides the backbone for long‑term cataloging, metadata governance, and enterprise-wide IP findability, ensuring standardized provenance across both digitized and legacy records.

The Core Challenge: Traceability Archival Debt

The primary business challenge was the inability to quickly locate traceability IP documentation—invoices, packing slips, and certificates that prove part authenticity. These records are essential for counterfeit risk mitigation, regulatory compliance, and new contract bids.

The Debt: Decades of fragmented records lacked a consistent standard and were scattered across systems and locations:

11 filing cabinets of unscanned paper
Legacy databases (BLAST, Syspro)
Various network drives

Business Impact: The Trade Compliance team spent days searching for records, and the company occasionally had to “no bid” on lucrative contracts because they couldn’t quickly confirm the existence of necessary provenance documentation.

The Solution: The Traceability Project’s Centralized Archival Strategy

The archives department launched a comprehensive two-pronged project to centralize traceability documentation consisting of both physical records and digital legacy data.

“Soutron’s archives platform and support services provided what we needed to digitize decades of documentation into a centralized database that increased Rochester IP findability,” states Turney. "I can't say enough good things about Soutron, and highly recommend them."

Meghan Turney, MLIS

Archives Supervisor at Rochester Electronics, LLC

Archivist Jamie Thibeault

Digitizing Physical Records

Strategy: Partnered with Whittier Tech vocational school to hire co-op students (“Megan’s Army”) to scan the paper records.
Consistency: The team created a Visual Aid notebook (OneNote) and used a Teams group chat to standardize documentation identification and naming conventions, allowing students to train and assist one another.
Status: Scanning is complete, but the data is currently searchable in a directory rather than the main Soutron Archive database, awaiting a strategy to correctly link wafer part numbers to finished good part numbers.

Whittier Tech Vocational School Students (“Megan’s Army”)

Digital Legacy Data Migration (The BLAST Database)

Goal:

Link historical “bulk receipt worksheets” (metadata) with corresponding PDF scans (documentation).

Trial and Error:

The first Python automation script (Track Auto 1.0) written by an intern successfully extracted data but caused massive data bloat by duplicating documents for every line item in a shipment.
The second script (Track Auto 2.0) developed with a Rochester senior software engineer fixed the issue by extracting data and pointing all records to singular copies of attachments, correcting the storage problem.
Result: The team successfully imported over 2.5 million new records between March and July 2025.

Proving Monetary Value (The P&L Summary)

Since the archives operates without a formal budget, Meghan Turney maintains a monthly spreadsheet. By multiplying the archives’ output, such as data extraction and scanning, by the equivalent rates of an off-site vendor, and subtracting internal expenses, the team provides management with a clear bottom-line financial benefit.

Measuring Efficiency and Project Success

Traceability Success: The Trade Compliance team can now search the digitized records in the Soutron Archive database with significantly higher success rates, as the success rate for finding documents in Semi-Search is trending upward, currently near 50%, with a goal of reaching >80% accuracy.
Productivity Metrics: Staff track daily processing numbers in OneNote for various categories (Records Created, Media Processed, Backlog) to inform formal goals in HR systems and predict project timelines.
Feedback Loops: Regular Power User Meetings are held with top staff to gather feedback on the search system, which drives continuous improvement of both the data and the underlying system.

Key Lessons Learned

The success of the Traceability Project highlighted four core lessons:

Collaboration is Key: Relying on IT, engineering, and student co-ops was critical.
Trial and Error is Valuable: The failure of the first automation script provided clarity and led to a robust second-generation solution.
Stakeholder Feedback Matters: Direct input from Trade Compliance drives relevant, tailored solutions.
Expert Vendor Support: The Soutron Corporate Archive SaaS platform provides not only powerful cataloging, archive metadata management, and search capabilities but also dedicated support from Soutron team members who provide much-valued ideas on how best to address complex corporate archive needs.

The partnership between Soutron Global and Rochester Electronics combining robust archival technology with expert consultation, proved essential to Rochester Electronics’ ability to tackle their complex manufacturing archive challenges and achieve their ambitious goals.

Next Steps:

Learn more about how Rochester Electronics has used the Soutron Archive Thesuarus to standardize internal technical communications and how implementing the Soutron End-User Submission facility has shortened archival workflows, access their Case Study here: Rochester Electronics Transforms Internal Content Management with Soutron Archive.

To find out more about Rochester Electronics and the services available, visit their website for details:
www.rocelec.com

To find out how you can migrate to a fast, secure, modern library and archive management system to support the needs of your organization, start a conversation with us and schedule an online demonstration today!