3 Keys to Reduce Time and Cost for Service Documentation and Tech Pubs Production
Looking for an effective solution to cut your service documents and tech pubs production time down, while reducing costs? Explore the benefits of PLM enabled service documentation and tech pubs authoring.
#1: Start with leading PLM software
Teamcenter, the world’s leading product lifecycle management (PLM) solution provides its users with a single source of product information that can be shared with key stakeholders across a digital enterprise. Using core Teamcenter capabilities such as BOM management, document management, workflow, and visualization – you can leverage a digital twin to develop your product and manage your product data. Extending Teamcenter capabilities into other product lifecycle domain areas like technical publications, and service planning will provide even more benefits.
Using Teamcenter, technical writers can research product structure and details, participate in workflow and change processes, receive event notifications and in general have visibility to different aspects of documentation and product. They can leverage data managed in Teamcenter to enrich product documents, service instructions and technical publications. CAD-based animations can be incorporated into documentation, service instructions and tech pubs. This includes traditional PDF and HTML publications or interactive and augmented reality publications consistently, while remaining compliant with XML specifications like DITA and S1000D.
Siemens Mobility uses Teamcenter with RapidAuthor to take their business to a whole new level. Read the full story here.
#2: Connect PLM to leading tech pubs solution
The Siemens Xcelerator open ecosystem enables a seamless integration between Teamcenter and other systems. The partnership between Siemens and Cortona3D delivers an integrated solution that allows technical authors to work in a PLM environment, enabling them to interact directly with engineering design geometry and BOMs, and rapidly create 2D/3D interactive parts catalogs, maintenance manuals, training materials, and service instructions that reflect accurate product configurations. With direct access to the product source material, authors can create and manage technical publications and streamline changes. The integrated solution makes certain that documentation is accurate, complete, and up-to-date.
Another benefit of the integration is reuse of different types of content objects. For example, you can reference the same graphic or warning message from different XML content modules or reuse a generic content module or chapter in different document structures. This has many advantages, including improved consistency and reduced cost for content creation and translation. Keeping track of where and how this content is reused (via Teamcenter), allows for these benefits.
Authors can see what they change. They can identify really quickly which parts are new and which parts are old. We didn’t have such a tool before.
CRISTOPHER ALCAIDE AMREIN, Team Leader Technical ICT, Pilatus
#3 Leverage tech pubs for service to work smarter
Why is technical publishing for service so important? Increasing pressure for manufacturers on after-sales services – including globalization of service, product complexity, performance based service contracts, and IoT – require intelligent technical information on products and procedures which must be accurate, interconnected, intuitive, and immediately accessible. Enabling easy access to the right engineering and service data will help your technical publishing team address these challenges while working smarter and more efficiently to author content. As a result, they provide accurate and intuitive materials to your service technicians to improve service outcomes. For example, authors using RapidAuthor for Teamcenter, integrated with Service Planner, can automatically generate work instructions from Service Planner. Support equipment data, safety conditions, and other service information can be reused directly in your publication. Any changes to your service data can be applied automatically to work instructions — no need to research and edit manually.
Save time and reduce costs
Service documentation generated using this integrated solution approach helps technical authors work smarter and faster. With explicit and accurate 2D / 3D graphics, or animation, this rich visual content is highly effective in communicating the right part and process information to service teams. The content will help service technicians improve service quality, minimizing asset down time, and ultimately – keep your customers happy.
Learn More
Read the case study to learn how Siemens Mobility leverages Teamcenter and RapidAuthor to reduce tech pubs authoring by 50%
Read about the latest RapidAuthor for Teamcenter updates
Explore Service Lifecycle Management at your own pace with a free, 30-day software trial
