The scenario: Monday, the weekly Jour Fixe of the Division Managers with the company's Management is well underway. The Head of the machine and plant manufacturer is engaged in dropping an anecdote from last week: "I was standing between the old packaging lines with the Production Manager of our customer SOLU-MedTech, because of a new large order when his smartphone pushed out a message. He checked the message and then immediately started scrolling and clicking. Then he said, "There's a Sensor Error on Line 5, but Mr. Schmidt is already on it — it's not a big deal... and by the way, I'd like to see this kind of function on your new equipment as well …”
What had just happened? Via an app, the production plant reported a malfunction to a selected group of employees. The person who takes care of the malfunction pushes the status message "In Progress" to the system. All the notified people see the error message and the status of the processing. They can, if necessary, call up the suggestions for troubleshooting from the Service Manual. Required tools, materials and spare parts are also displayed, if necessary. If this isn't enough, additional topics from the technical documentation can be called up via suggested, context-sensitive search terms.
But back to the Jour Fixe. Of course, the Boss immediately wanted to know how far we had gotten with the subject. There is already a company-wide digitisation concept that also includes mobile documentation. What's the status of its implementation? When will we be able to offer our customers such a solution?
Sure, the concept is there, but there are also hurdles everywhere, and it ends in the implementation of the projects and to-dos derived from it:
Every company that is currently taking this step (or those who want to take it) is at an individual point here. So there's truly no universal truth or solution.
However, there is often a recipe for success among customers who are currently navigating this path successfully: The large digitisation concept is divided into realistic sub-projects (i.e. "chunks"), in order to focus on solutions and to-dos that can be implemented immediately or during the short-term. The resources and investments required for this remain manageable, partial goals are achieved and the company doesn't get bogged down with tasks that perhaps can't yet be solved.
Answering the questions "What's our current status?" and "How far have we come and where's the sticking point?" can provide good approaches as to which sub-projects (or chunks) look promising and, above all, are actually feasible as a next step.
The core areas of consideration can be, for example:
Considering the current state should not aim to achieve the most comprehensive picture possible of all facets of these complex issues. The current state should merely provide ideas for concrete approaches that can already be implemented in the manner described above and bring you closer to the goal of digitised technical documentation. Ideally, these sub-goals already create a usable additional benefit for the target groups of the information.
Similar to a jigsaw puzzle, where it's a common successful strategy to concentrate on first tackling certain areas of the picture or the edges, the sum of all sub-projects also produces the overall picture over the medium-term.
Unlike a rigid puzzle, however, the result here is flexible. It can adapt to market changes, new target aspects or advanced, as well as new technical possibilities and software solutions, during its implementation.
Sub-projects that increasingly pursue the use and integration of existing content, systems and solutions (and that we frequently develop and implement together with customers) include:
We’d be happy to be your guide during this process, recognising the appropriate pieces of the puzzle and working with you to successfully shape them into partial images that immediately add value.
Digitise technical documentation? Yes! Get started now, because there's never an "ideal" time!