Automotive
Platform engineering concepts, i.e. leverage a common set of core assets (a platform) — which are well known in the industrial development, construction and production worlds — are becoming more and more common in technical documentation, where modularization, structuring and version control are emerging as core elements. The goal of required solutions is to synchronize the modular organized processes of product engineering with its creation of information to be used in producing consistently high-quality documentation, more often vehicle- or product-specifically (e.g. VIN and PIN specific documentation from the same data source/platform).
The requirements for the technical writers can be characterized as:
Faster — shorter production cycles and processing times;
Reasonable — avoidance of unnecessary cost factors, notably through time-consuming and error-prone manual layout work; and
Effective — avoidance of duplicated text, which can lead to an exponential increase in human labor, and additional errors.
Despite increasing requirements pressure, the highest priority is and will be achieving premier quality. High-quality products must be accompanied by high-quality technical documentation.
Strict guidelines for a "new" solution:
Fast implementation of the new hardware and software solution – fast "return on investment".
No production disruption but protection of existing processes and safeguarding of provisioning targets at the production lines.
Integration into the existing IT-environment.
Shorter time limits for editing, translation and publication.
More flexible limits for research and development.
Re-use of information spanning different documentation types.
Structured data management.
Migration and re-use of legacy data.
