Technical Documentation

Technical documentation is a legal obligation for manufacturers of machinery and equipment. First, technical documentation is required for product liability reasons; secondly, the technical documentation comprises all procedures and processes according to national and international regulations to use the finished product optimally.

Technical documentation - standards and regulations

These norms and standards specify how technical documentation should be created and how it should be structured. Besides the EC Machinery Directive 2006/42/EC, the most important regulation in German-speaking countries is the VDI 4500 issued by Verein Deutscher Ingenieure respectively the standard DIN EN 62079. VDI 4500 breaks down technical documentation into an internal and an external part. The internal part includes documentation for construction and manufacturing, functional specifications and quality assurance measures in particular.

Internal and external technical documentation

The internal technical documentation remains permanently with the manufacturer and is constantly updated simultaneously with further developments of documented technical products. The external technical documentation is designed for users of technical products or machinery. Documents such as handbooks, user manuals or instruction for use represent technical documents that are created by technical editors with a content management system for a specific target audience. These documents must also meet certain requirements that are governed in VDI 4500 and in the European Standard EN 62079.

Advantages of technical documentation

A high quality and up-to-date technical documentation offers advantages to all parties and users. On the development side, technical documentation facilitates communication during development and reorganisation and on the user side, it optimises all procedures, clarifies any issues on products and helps reducing costs due to queries or support services.

Technical documentation and requirements

The need to keep technical documentation always up to date represents an organisational problem for many manufacturers of technical products. As a result, technical documentation is often neglected and loses its values of benefits. One reason could be the shortage of qualified personnel, but more often, it is just the lack of an appropriate content management system for technical documentation.

Such a technical content management system helps keeping the requirements of updating as low as possible, since all resources and documents are available in the content management system in structured way and can be easily found and adapted to current conditions. Using a content management system that works with modules is much more productive than applying conventional methods, as each detail can be found quickly and may be updated through links within the overall context.

The content management system for technical documentation

However not any content management system is suitable for any requirement and not all content management systems meet the expectations of users. If you need to create and maintain technical documentation, our service of technical documentation "documate", complete with content management system, will assist you.

For your technical documentation, we compile directive-compliant documents from instruction manuals to data sheets and to product catalogues. In this case, we are working with "docuglobe", a highly productive content management system for technical documentation that allows your technical documentation to be updated immediately.

The content management system "docuglobe" was developed with your technical documentation in mind and has proved itself in actual use. The content management system makes all processes related to technical documentation more efficient and its use results in sustainable quality. The modular design allows flexible handling of variable documents, as is expected in general from any content management system. In a content management system for technical documentation, this flexibility is vital since technical documents are often in a progress of revision.

Only a well-proven content management system that is able to withstand the constant pressure of change, supports a variety of file formats and manages workflows either object or user-based, is a content management system flexible enough to really meet all requirements of technical documentation in the long run. A content management system that does not require additional staff and prevents redundant data storage is a technical content management system that is truly efficient.