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The archive team at Rochester Electronics needed one secure, searchable home for everything the business runs on.
Rochester Electronics, LLC is a US-based semiconductor manufacturer serving the industrial, medical, automotive, aerospace and defence sectors. With over 500,000 documents spread across multiple departments in various formats, the company had no single searchable system, inconsistent terminology across teams and document-level security requirements that varied by clearance level.
Rochester worked with Soutron Global to restructure their archive, applying granular security permissions, standardizing terminology via Soutron’s metadata Thesaurus and introducing a staff submission workflow.
The result was a single, secure, searchable archive that cut administrative effort and gave engineers faster access to the documents they needed.
Rochester Electronics, LLC has been providing 100% authorized semiconductors to customers worldwide for over 40 years. They have over 15 billion devices in stock, encompassing more than 200,000-part numbers, in addition to providing extensive design and licensed manufacturing capabilities to their clients.
Their clientele includes customers in the industrial, transportation, medical, automotive, aerospace, and defense market segments.
“The biggest advantage to implementing Soutron Archive was information organization and improved searchability.”
Meghan Turney, MLIS
Archives Supervisor
The archives department at Rochester Electronics supports the company’s engineering staff, including electrical and process, as well as manufacturing experts, as part of their content management and protection duties. Rochester’s materials were spread physically and electronically across multiple departments and various storage media.
To govern the 500,000 documents, many with custom file types, Rochester’s archive staff needed a solution that would support a large volume of documents, custom file types, images, and design schematics, all securely stored in one database. Given the nature of their business, security concerns needed to be addressed. Access to some of the documents require a higher security clearance, some require department-wide security only, and some require a tight level of granular security.
Finally, it was vital that the company’s engineers and archive team could quickly and easily find what they needed at a moment’s notice. What they needed was a single archive to securely store and protect their proprietary content, submitted and cataloged with proper metadata classification for quick findability.
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A Soutron client since 2014, Rochester’s archive staff reached out to Soutron Global to see if there was a way to incorporate the new materials into Soutron, given the extra security requirements and the wide variety of standard and custom document formats.
A review of Rochester’s requirements and Soutron’s archival capabilities proved that Soutron’s robust search functionality, ability to store custom file types flexibly and securely, ease of customization, PDF viewer, and metadata thesaurus would resolve their needs.
“Soutron is a very customizable archive system that allows you to tailor your database to the many needs you and your company may have,” said Meghan Turney, MLIS, Archives Supervisor at Rochester Electronics. “I can’t say enough good things about Soutron! They’ve been tremendously helpful in addressing our needs and are a true delight to work with.”
Working with Soutron Global, Rochester’s archive staff tailored Soutron to update their database structure to organize materials better, secure documents, manage metadata, and create unique resource pages to help users find what they were looking for. “Soutron has been a great team to work with. They are solution-based with customizations for your institutional needs,” states Meghan.
Soutron’s Thesaurus Standardizes Communications
Soutron’s robust metadata Thesaurus functionality has contributed to Rochester Electronics improving its communications and helps deliver more relevant results when searching for materials.
Before, various departments used different names for the same item. To standardize the terminology, Rochester’s archivists utilized Soutron’s Thesaurus to establish validation metadata lists for each department’s specific vocabulary. Meghan adds “I appreciate the ability to connect metadata across various product lines.”
End-user Submission Shortens Workflows
Rochester’s employees now submit their materials for approval into the archive database, which “Makes my job easier,” states Meghan. Employees who submit materials are guided with a customizable online submission form. Due to the flexibility of system, Meghan has been able to change field names to make the submission process intuitive and easily understood. During the submission process, if the correct metadata vocabulary term is not found, the submitter can enter the new term for approval into the Thesaurus to enable the use of that new keyword.
Productivity improvement has been a great boon to Rochester Electronics staff. “Our team’s workflows would be twice as long without this product,” says Meghan.
Security
The company’s new secure search portal provides access to multiple shared resource pages, in addition to segmented departmental materials, providing each department with secure access to its items. Additional granular permissions are applied for sensitive content, further helping to maintain proper security measures.
Before implementing Soutron Archive to manage their content, Rochester’s materials were spread physically and electronically across multiple departments and various storage media. Combining all this information into one system and making the materials easily searchable while addressing changing archival needs presented a challenge.
Soutron’s flexible structure has provided Rochester Electronics with a simple, standardized search capability, robust metadata management, a customizable search portal, and a single storage solution that the original shared media system lacked. Their collection now includes almost 500,000 records, many containing design schematics with custom record types.
According to Meghan, “The biggest advantage to implementing Soutron Archive was information organization and improved searchability. Although the transition completely changed certain workflows, our engineers submit materials daily. They also say it’s much easier to find what they need now, compared to the previous solution.”
To learn more about Rochester Electronics and its services and solutions, visit their website at: www.rocelec.com
To find out how you can migrate to a fast, secure, cloud-based archive management system to support your organization, book a 20 minute discovery call with us today, see below.
““I can’t say enough good things about Soutron!”
Meghan Turney, MLIS
Archives Supervisor
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Semiconductor companies managing large document volumes need an archive system that supports custom file types, design schematics, and images within a single secure database. A cloud-based archive management system like Soutron Archive allows organizations to apply granular, document-level security permissions, ensuring engineers and staff only access materials appropriate to their clearance level.
This removes the risk of sensitive proprietary content being stored across disconnected departments and storage formats.
When different departments use different names for the same components, materials, or processes, search results become unreliable and institutional knowledge is harder to find.
A metadata Thesaurus built into an archive management system allows archivists to create validated vocabulary lists for each department, linking terminology across product lines and ensuring searches return consistent, relevant results regardless of which term an engineer uses. Rochester Electronics used Soutron's Thesaurus functionality to standardize terminology across its archive of over 500,000 documents.
An end-user submission workflow allows engineers and other staff to submit materials for archive approval using a customizable online form, guiding them through the correct metadata and classification requirements at the point of submission. This shifts the initial cataloging burden away from archive staff and ensures materials enter the system correctly from the start.
Rochester Electronics implemented this approach through Soutron Archive, reducing administrative effort for its archive team while improving the speed and accuracy of document ingestion.
Yes. Organizations supplying the aerospace, defense, and medical sectors often handle documents that require different levels of access control within the same archive. A robust archive management system should support document-level and department-level security permissions, allowing archive managers to restrict access to sensitive materials without limiting visibility of general resources.
Soutron Archive provides this granular security capability, making it well suited to regulated industries where proprietary content, licensed manufacturing data, and classified materials must coexist within a single, searchable system.
