Is your technical data a sales advantage or a liability?
For 30+ years the OneStrand Team have assisted Aerospace, Defense, and Civilian Manufacturing organisations take control of their technical documentation. The following scenario is one that many of our Clients have shared with us:
The problem scenario
Things started out with document production and changes to customer’s documents being fairly manageable…
A parts list with matching drawings is provided by Engineering to the documentation team. One author prepared an Illustrated Parts Book, in Microsoft Word with that content and drawings.
The others in the team then prepare any required Operator or Maintenance Manuals in Word, to go with the parts information.
Originally we were only expected to deliver documentation as a PDF with some bookmarks and we are looking to implement some sort of online parts information.
Things are going OK, then…
Sales of our Model 111 go well, and then the Engineers built a model 222 and 333.
To quickly deliver the required Parts, Operator and Maintenance manuals for the two new models, we simply copied the original 111 manuals and based on Engineering data, we then manually made the required changes to the 2 new book sets.
Then Engineering informed us that the 111 can be purchased with the original alternator, or for a tougher work site, can also be purchased in a different configuration with a Variant B Alternator, so yet another copy of the manuals was made for that configuration.
And then the exciting news came that our equipment is so in demand that we are exporting, not only to one country, but two. Now ALL those documents will have to be duplicated again and translated to other languages!
The struggle grows!
The authoring team is already struggling to manage the above publications…and new customers are demanding the manuals be delivered in different formats, including an interactive online manual that can also operate when disconnected from the internet, PDF, and iPad.
With the content in Word, there is no way this can be achieved!
Now whenever the Technical Documentation receive an engineering change that affects all Models and their variant configurations, this means 36 manuals will need to be updated!
AND after every update cycle, we need to check translations and work out a way to deliver to the end user, various formats that customers are now expecting.
It does not have to be such a challenge
Using a Common Source Database (CSDB) or central repository, Engineering parts data and drawings can be stored once and re-used across multiple document types, configurations and language versions of the manuals. Technical procedures for repair and operation content is then prepared as single smaller pieces of information and also added into the CSDB.
These smaller pieces of content and images can then be inserted into various larger documents, allowing for content to be updated once and shared many times.
The smaller pieces of information also allow multiple authors to be working on components of the larger document content at the same time.
The components are then automatically combined and published to multiple delivery formats that are required by the end users.
This process is called Dynamic Multi-Channel Publishing!
Put your information to work
Add intelligence to your parts, maintenance and operational data to provide better in-field maintenance and customer support.
In a competitive market your customers expect the highest level of performance, do not be left behind!
For 30+ years the OneStrand Team have assisted Aerospace, Defense, and Civilian Manufacturing organisations take control of their technical documentation.
To discuss how you can turn your Technical Data into a Sales advantage, contact the OneStrand Team today.
