Part 4 of 4 in our One deck for every audience series. The method that keeps one deck current for every audience works just as well for manuals. Here is how to keep every customer's manual in one file, and put the current one a tap away from the machine.
The manual at the machine is rarely the current one
A machine builder ships the same machine to many customers, each with its own options, settings and site notes, and each customer gets a manual. The usual way to make it is the copied deck all over again: take the last manual, change what differs, save it under the customer's name.
The result is familiar. A safety note is improved in one manual and not in the others. The printed copy left at commissioning stays in the cabinet long after the manual has moved on. And when an operator or a service technician needs the manual at the machine, the one they find is not the one the office would hand them.
For the builder, every copy is a cost as well: one more file to check at each change, and one more chance that a customer's manual misses an update that matters.
Every customer's manual in one source file
A manual is a set of pages, and a deck is a set of slides. Genie makes manuals as well as presentations, so the method of the earlier parts of this series applies directly:
- Common pages - safety, operation, routine maintenance - live once, in the source file.
- Option pages live once too, one set for each option you offer.
- Each customer's manual is a collection. It takes the common pages, plus the pages for the options that customer bought.
PowerPoint suits this kind of document well. Diagrams, photos and short blocks of text, laid out on a fixed page, are what slides do best, and most teams already know how to make them.
Improve a safety page once, and every customer's manual has it the next time it is exported. Sections organise the source the way Part 2 describes: in the order a reader works through the manual, each named for the question its pages answer.
Genie's own readme is built this way
We use the method for our own documents. Genie's readme, the PDF on the Genie page, is not a separate document. It is a collection in Genie's demonstration deck, exported to PDF. The demonstration and the readme come from the same source, so a slide they share is improved in both at once. It is the method of this series at a small scale: one source, and one more audience.
One tap from the machine
A PDF only helps at the machine if someone can find it there. An NFC tag closes that gap. A small tag on the machine holds the link to its manual; an operator or a technician taps it with a phone, and the PDF opens. No searching a shared drive, and no printed copy going stale in a cabinet. It helps the people who rarely need the manual, too: a contractor who visits once a year finds it the same way as the operator who works at the machine every day.
CATIM works this way: we publish our PDFs to an online document library and write their links into NFC tags. See our NFC tagging products for the tags themselves.
The key is to keep the link the same while the PDF behind it changes. Genie names each PDF after its collection, so a customer's manual comes out under the same name every time. Leave the date out of the file name, publish each export to the same place in a library where a replaced file keeps its link, and the tag on the machine never needs rewriting. The tag stays put; the manual behind it stays current.
Keep the service notes out of the field
Manuals have internal pages too: notes for your own service team, commissioning checklists, pages for an option that is still being written up. Part 3's labels handle them. Mark internal pages internal and unfinished pages draft, and keep them out of the customer's collection.
If one slips into a customer's collection by mistake, Genie's default rules refuse that PDF rather than let it out: an internal or draft page never becomes part of a PDF, so it never reaches a tag on a customer's machine. Your service team can keep a collection of its own in the same source, with every common page as current as the customer's.
Current at the machine, not only in the office
The same idea runs through this whole series. Keep one source, cut it for each audience with collections, label every slide for who may see it, and make every output from the source when you need it. For a machine builder, that last output can sit on the machine itself, one tap away, and always the current one. The work is the same as for a deck: one file to keep right, and every customer's copy made from it.
Genie is on the Genie page, free to use, with advanced features under a licence. If you build machines and would like to talk through manuals, NFC tags or both, get in touch.
About CATIM. CATIM - Creating Automation Technology In Motion - empowers people to engineer automation solutions that solve hard technical problems. Genie, CATIM's PowerPoint add-in, is free to use, with advanced features under licence: catim.co/genie.