The Development of Technical and Business Documentation
This subject company was in the midst of rapid growth, transitioning from a small niche developer and integrator to a recognized leader in its field. As a result, they wisely concentrated on growing their personnel resources in the areas of management, engineering, and production, but were unable to keep pace with the growing documentation requirements that were a consequence of that growth.
The Sequence of Events:
Their initial tasking of HKA was to create an operator’s manual and a quick-start guide for one of their products. We collected source data and interviewed customer engineering staff to verify its accuracy. From this source data we produced the initial draft version of the required documentation for customer review. After their review we incorporated their technical changes and produced the final deliverable version of the documents on CD-ROM and in paper.
As The Client Gained Confidence In Our Performance And Their Product Line Diversified, They Continued To Expand Our Tasking To Include:
- Providing operation and maintenance documentation for all of their product lines;
- Development of documentation for training, field maintenance and depot maintenance;
- Complete life-cycle documentation for all of their product lines.
Simultaneous with these services we also provided Business Process Analysis support. This involved the collection of existing business process information and supporting data, analysis of that information and design of comprehensive procedures for all aspects of the client business operation. As a result we revised or created standard operating procedures and their documentation, and provided on-site Configuration Management support to ensure that the systems, procedures and data implemented were consistently adhered to and their integrity maintained.
One particularly problematic area for this client was control of the development of engineering data, drawings, inventory and their coordination between design engineering and production as well as their change/revision/release control procedures.
Our solution was to work with their management and engineering, drafting and production staff to develop a proven and reliable numbering schema for control of their parts inventory and drawing sets. This included the development of update and revision controls and release procedures. We were also tasked with the research and implementation of an automated inventory system to control all aspects of parts and product inventory, requisitioning and purchasing.
Some Of The Resulting Benefits Of Our Total Services To This Client Were:
- Quality operation and maintenance documentation delivered with their products.
- Consistent and accurate drawing and part number policies and procedures with strong version controls.
- Decrease in obsolescent inventory and improved accuracy of inventory data.
- Improved time to market of their products from design to delivery (a large percentage of their product development was via integration and predominantly custom configurations for each of their customers).
- Improved accuracy of design information for external fabricators.
- Strong production and testing procedures
- Complete documentation of their processes and procedures that aid in daily operation and the training and indoctrination of new employees.
- Freedom of their managers, engineers and production staff to concentrate on managing, designing, and producing their product.