Despite the numerous technological innovations that have been implemented by manufacturers in recent years, many firms are still dealing with endless amounts of printed documents. For maintenance engineers, everything from instruction manuals and training documentation to parts catalogues are often only accessible in paper form.
Not only are these documents time-consuming for engineers to use, they are also costly and environmentally unfriendly. The need to regularly update huge numbers of PDF files as product models are upgraded, then translate them into different languages, means an even bigger paper pile.
Manufacturers and engineers both lose out in this environment – with major overheads being generated from such extensive paper-based processes. Relying on printed documents also restricts highly skilled engineers to a cumbersome 2D format when they would much rather work with this information via interactive 3D digital models.
In today’s technologically...