DesignTech Systems is one of the leading organisations providing design and development of Interactive Electronic Technical Manuals (IETM) and Interactive Electronic Technical Publications (IETP) services to Defence, Aerospace, Naval services and manufacturing industries. DesignTech Systems carries 10 plus years of proven experience in technical manuals development area. We have delivered numerous level 1, 2, 3 & 4 IETMs for various OEMs and ship builders and defence establishments. The IETMs are developed in accordance with Joint Service Guide (JSG) 0852:2001 as well as S1000D guidelines.
As the name suggests, IETM is an electronic medium to manage technical documentation. US DOD has defined IETM as a technical manual prepared in a digital form using a suitable medium and designed for Electronic Window display to the user. IETMs represent technical information in different formats like text, images, videos, sound etc and allow users to locate required information promptly
Need for IETM / IETP
As the complexity of products grew, there arose the need of technical manuals that elaborated on the detailed working of the product. Most of you must be familiar with the technical manuals that came with household items like refrigerators, T.V.s, washing machines, microwaves, etc. These manuals detailed each and every aspect of the gadget, and also suggested probable causes and remedies in case of failure. The catch is that more complex the product; more complicated the technical manual. On the ground level, most of us do not really bother to read these manuals. The main reason is that they are very tedious to read because of their technical jargon and detailing. However, it is a statutory requirement for companies to provide detailed information about each and every part / aspect of the product. Now imagine the scenario for something as complicated as a fighter aircraft, a warship or a battle tank. Companies that manufacture these and other gadgets for the military forces are required to furnish highly detailed technical documentation for the maintenance crew. The air force services, the naval services and the army services – in short all the service divisions of the military, have to deal with tons of technical documents. Not only is all this documentation complicated; the sheer volume of paper literally occupies lot of physical space. As an example, the complete documentation of a battle ship, which includes maintenance and operation manuals, can occupy an entire room. Just imagine the kind of space all the literature for various vehicles, ships, aircrafts or gadgetry of all the three services must occupy. To tackle this issue and take advantage of digitization, the concept of Interactive Electronic Technical Manuals (IETM) that made manuals easier to decipher. These electronic technical manuals, also termed as Interactive Electronic Technical Publications (IETP), are gradually replacing the printed manuals. Not only in Services, but even the manuals for household gadgets are being slowly replaced by these IETMs / IETPs. This electronic version of the battleship manual (as an example) occupies very little space and can be viewed on tablets, laptops or even from smartphones from any part of the ship.
Because they proved to be extremely useful, ITEMs and IETPs have gained in popularity and acceptance in other service and manufacturing industries from all over the world. Today, India and most other countries use IETM services in one form or other. IETM / IETP services are typically provided by a contractor or by the Government in digital form. IETMs / IETPs are specifically designed for digital display to an end user, and have many advantages over printed manuals:
Integration of Reality technologies with Technical Manuals
DesignTech Systems is the only organisation having experience in development of technical manuals and reality technology based experiences. This is a very unique offering from DesignTech Systems Combining the latest reality based technologies like Augmented Reality (AR) and Mixed Reality (MR) with technical manuals for a very effective and explicit understanding of critical operations. With this technique all the crucial operations, maintenance, service & repair processes can be converted in reality based experiences and integrated with technical manuals
DesignTech Systems Value Proposition - 360 degree services for IETM development
DesignTech Systems Differentiators
Classification of IETMs
Depending upon the level of sophistication, IETMs can be classified into five main classes. It should be noted that these classes quintessentially represent advances in digital technology
Class-1: Electronically indexed pages- This IETM class follows the structure of a printed book, with indexes and table of contents that are hyperlinked into the content of the document
Class-2: Electronically scrolling documents- This format includes more hyperlinks than Class I, such as figures, tables and section references. A hyperlinked PDF document is the typical example of this class
Class-3: Linearly structured IETM- in this class the book structure is discarded; instead the document is structured more freely following the logic of the content. Hyperlinking is provided throughout the document
Class-4: Hierarchically structured IETM- In this class the data is stored in a relational database, obtaining benefits of data integrity and removal of data redundancy. Relationships in the content that are presented as hyperlinks, are mapped directly to relations in the database schema
Class-5: Integrated data base - In this class the documentation is now integrated with expert systems that may influence the display of content. For example, the IETM system may aggregate data from a large number of users input, feed that to the expert system that analyses it and then the result gets fed back to the user through the IETM system.
DesignTech Systems Class 4 IETM Expertise
Features of Class 4 IETM
Class 4 IETM developed by DesignTech Systems has following key features and functionalities
| Functionality | Description |
|---|---|
| Administrator Function |
To control the documents access based on user profile To manage user annotaitons and bookmark To maintain data backup |
| User dashboard |
User Dashboard includes features like Manage Bookmarks, Manage Annotations, Change Password, Search, Logout etc. |
| IETM dashboard |
This dashboard consists of electronic content on the right and tree structure based navigation of content on left, other features include Search, Print, Annotation, Bookmark, Help, Navigation and Home options |
| Annotations |
User can add new annotation in the content. Annotations are public or private |
| Bookmarks |
User can add a bookmark to the content. Bookmarks are public or private. |
| Hotspotting |
Hotspotting functionality is used for |
| Hyperlinking |
used for logical content navigation |
| Local search |
Keyword based search on the specific page |
| Advanced search |
Keyword based search across the application |
| Page navigation |
to navigate to next and previous pages |
| Manuals tab |
All the related manuals are placed under this tab and can be viewed with integrated PDF viewer |
|
Prints current page content |
|
| Change password |
Enables user to change password |
| History |
This functionality provides a summary of user activities based on navigation history |
| Help |
Help consists two sections - About IETM and Getting started which explains how to use the IETM |
| Logout |
To close the user session and logout from application |