5 Signs Your Electrical Design Process Needs Automation
Is your engineering team spending too much time on documentation, fighting BOM errors, or struggling with slow project setup? These 5 signs reveal when manual processes are holding you back — and what to do about it.
5 Signs Your Electrical Design Process Needs Automation
Most engineering teams know they have inefficiencies. But inefficiency in electrical design is often invisible — it hides inside routines your team has done the same way for years.
The engineers are busy. Projects are being delivered. The process “works.”
Until it doesn’t.
A missed wire number causes a rework. A BOM error holds up procurement. A schematic that took three days to draw could have taken three hours. These are not random events — they are symptoms of a design process that has grown beyond what manual methods can reliably support.
This article identifies the five clearest signs that your electrical design process needs automation — and what the path forward looks like.
Sign #1: Your Engineers Spend More Than 20% of Project Time on Documentation
Electrical documentation — BOMs, terminal charts, cable schedules, legends, nameplate lists — is necessary and valuable. But generating it manually is not.
The problem: In traditional workflows, an engineer finishes the schematic design and then spends days manually compiling the BOM from the drawings, cross-checking terminal numbers, and building cable schedules in Excel. This documentation work can consume 25–40% of total project time.
What this looks like in practice:
- Engineers spend Monday–Wednesday on schematics, then Thursday–Friday “doing the paperwork”
- The BOM is created by hand in Excel, referencing the drawings
- Any last-minute schematic change means manually updating every affected document
- One engineer becomes the “BOM person” because the process is too error-prone to share
What automation looks like: With a database-driven tool like EPLAN Electric P8, all documentation is generated automatically from the design data. The BOM, terminal chart, cable schedule, and PLC I/O list are all live reports — updated instantly whenever the design changes.
A change on page 5 is reflected in the BOM within seconds. No manual re-entry. No version mismatch.
The benchmark: In an automated workflow, documentation generation should take under 30 minutes for a complete project set — not days.
Sign #2: Your Error Rate on BOM and Terminal Strips Is Higher Than 1%
One error in a BOM at a panel builder means a wrong part ordered, a delay in delivery, or a rework at the assembly stage. At an end-client site, it can mean a commissioning delay that costs thousands per day.
The problem: Manual BOMs are built by humans reading drawings and typing data. The error rate is not a reflection of your team’s skill — it is a mathematical certainty. Research consistently shows that manual data entry produces error rates of 1–4% per field.
In a project with 500 BOM line items, a 2% error rate means 10 wrong or missing items. That is 10 procurement problems, reworks, or client complaints waiting to happen.
Common BOM errors we see:
- Wrong article number because a symbol was updated but the BOM was not
- Missing items — a device placed late in the design was never added to the manual BOM
- Wrong quantity — a symbol was copied but the count was not updated
- Obsolete part references — the engineer used last year’s BOM as a template
What automation looks like: EPLAN generates the BOM directly from placed symbols, each of which is linked to a verified parts database entry. There is no manual BOM — there is only the design, and the BOM is a report that reflects it exactly.
The benchmark: An automated BOM should have a part-error rate of <0.1% (human errors during initial data entry into the parts database, caught by check runs).
Sign #3: Starting a New Project Takes More Than One Day of Setup
Every new project should begin with a productive first session — engineers designing circuits, not copying files, cleaning up old project templates, re-entering standard information, or fixing leftover data from the previous job.
The problem: In many teams, “project setup” is a half-day or full-day task that involves:
- Copying a previous project as a template
- Manually editing the cover page, title block, and revision history
- Removing old circuit content that does not apply to the new job
- Re-entering client information across dozens of title blocks
- Setting up wire numbering from scratch
- Locating and placing “standard” circuits from memory or a shared folder of copied snippets
The hidden cost: Beyond time, this process introduces errors. The wrong client name survives in a title block. The wrong project number is in the file metadata. Old wire numbers from the previous project persist.
What automation looks like:
- A project wizard prompts the engineer for project name, client, standard, and revision — and builds the complete project structure from a certified master template
- Page macros inject standard pages (title page, legend, table of contents) pre-populated with the correct data
- Parts database is current and pre-loaded, so device placement is immediate
- Wire numbering is configured to your standard and applies automatically
The benchmark: New project setup — from blank to engineering-ready — should take under 15 minutes.
Sign #4: Design Reviews Take Multiple Rounds to Catch Errors That Should Have Been Caught Earlier
A design review should be a high-level validation exercise — checking that the design meets the functional and safety requirements, not hunting for wire number conflicts, missing cross-references, or floating connections.
The problem: When your design tools do not enforce rules in real time, errors accumulate invisibly during design and surface during review. Common examples:
- Wire number conflicts: Two different wires share the same number because the engineer forgot what was already used
- Missing cross-references: A contact is placed on page 8 but its coil reference on page 3 was never updated
- Floating connections: A wire has no endpoint, creating a connection that looks complete on screen but is electrically open
- Missing article numbers: A symbol was placed without a linked parts database entry — invisible until the BOM is generated
- Incorrect page structure: Pages are not in the correct order per the project structure standard
Each of these is a design check that can be automated. Each one being caught in review instead of by the tool is a sign that your process relies on human vigilance to compensate for a gap in your tooling.
What automation looks like: EPLAN’s built-in project check runs hundreds of validation rules automatically. Custom add-ins (built with the EPLAN C# API) can add company-specific rules — checking against your standard, your parts database, your naming convention. Engineers run the check before sending anything for review. Reviews focus on functionality, not formatting.
The benchmark: A project check before design review should produce zero errors related to numbering, cross-references, connections, or missing articles. If it does not, the process — not the review — needs to change.
Sign #5: Knowledge Lives in People, Not in Systems
This is the most dangerous sign of all — and the hardest to see from the inside.
The problem: In many electrical engineering teams, critical knowledge is stored in people’s heads, not in documented, reusable systems.
- The “standard” motor starter circuit exists because one engineer always draws it from memory the same way
- The correct part number for the preferred 40A circuit breaker is something only one person knows off the top of their head
- The project check for terminal strip conflicts is done by one senior engineer who has been there 15 years
- When a new engineer joins, they “learn the ropes” by sitting with an experienced colleague for weeks
This is not a team problem — it is a systems problem. When knowledge is person-dependent, your team has:
- Key-person risk: One person leaving can cripple a project
- Inconsistency: Different engineers produce designs that look and behave differently
- Slow onboarding: New engineers take months to become productive
- No scalability: Growth requires proportional hiring, because there is no leverage
What automation looks like:
- Standard circuits are encoded in a macro library — available to every engineer, every time, consistently
- Part selection is guided by a curated parts database — the correct component is always one search away
- Project rules are enforced by automated checks — no one needs to memorize them
- New engineers can follow structured workflows and produce compliant output within their first week
The benchmark: A new engineer should be able to produce a compliant schematic for a standard circuit type within their first two weeks, using only the tools and documentation provided.
What Comes Next?
If you recognized your team in two or more of these signs, the good news is that the path to automation is well-established. It does not require a complete overhaul of your workflow overnight — it requires a systematic approach to identifying the highest-impact manual steps and replacing them with automated equivalents.
At Vidhasri Technology, we help engineering teams:
- Assess — Audit your current process to identify the highest-cost manual steps
- Standardize — Build the macro libraries, parts databases, and project templates that form the foundation
- Automate — Develop EPLAN C# API add-ins that handle your most repetitive workflows
- Train — Equip your engineers to work effectively in the new automated environment
The result is a team that delivers more, with fewer errors, in less time — and that scales without needing to hire proportionally.
A Real-World Illustration
One of our clients — a special machine builder — had a project setup time of 1.5 days and a BOM error rate that was causing an average of 2 procurement reworks per project.
After a macro library build-out, parts database cleanup, and a custom project setup add-in, their project setup time dropped to under 20 minutes, and BOM errors dropped to near zero.
The same engineers. The same expertise. A different process.
Is Your Process Ready for Automation?
Start with a free 30-minute consultation. We will review your current workflow, identify the highest-impact improvements, and give you a clear picture of what automation could deliver for your team.
Contact us to get started — no commitment, just a conversation.
Summary: The 5 Signs
| # | Sign | What It Costs You |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Documentation takes >20% of project time | Engineer hours on manual paperwork instead of design |
| 2 | BOM/terminal error rate >1% | Procurement reworks, assembly errors, client trust |
| 3 | New project setup takes >1 day | Lost engineering hours and error-carrying templates |
| 4 | Design reviews catch basic errors | Review time wasted on things tools should catch |
| 5 | Knowledge lives in people, not systems | Key-person risk, inconsistency, slow onboarding |