• Inconsistencies and Errors: Manual data collection can lead to outdated or incorrect information permeating through various documents.​
• Inefficiencies: Repetitive tasks and lack of automation slow down the documentation process, delaying product releases.​
• Scalability Issues: As products become more complex, managing documentation manually becomes increasingly untenable.

• Single Source of Truth: Centralize content to ensure consistency across all documentation.​
• Automated Updates: Link documentation directly to product data, allowing automatic updates when changes occur.​
• Multi-Channel Delivery: Publish content across various formats and platforms without redundant efforts

• Arbortext Editor: A powerful, XML-based authoring tool designed for creating structured content. It supports real-time validation, ensuring content conforms to required standards as it’s written. This not only improves accuracy but also reduces the need for post-creation corrections.
• Arbortext Styler: A stylesheet design application that lets users visually create and manage styles for multiple output formats. Publishing to PDF, HTML, or EPUB? Styler allows organizations to control formatting rules without needing to write code, greatly simplifying the publishing process.
• Arbortext Publishing Engine: The automation hub of the suite, this engine assembles, formats, and publishes content from Arbortext Editor using predefined styles and templates. It eliminates manual tasks and ensures consistent, repeatable publishing workflows across the enterprise.

Most organizations recognize the importance of a ‘speedy response’ to a quality issue or a customer complaint.

In fact, faster service response time has been named as a top priority for many service lifecycle management efforts. The significant demand for manufacturers and service organizations to resolve customer issues promptly, and to quickly mitigate any product quality issues has become a challenge.

How do you overcome this challenge and implement a solution? The equation involves equipping service technicians and customer facing roles with the right information at the right time, along with aligning parts/inventory and service personnel.

For example, let’s look at a very realistic situation.

Imagine your dryer machine breaks down. You call the manufacturer and learn you have to wait three days for a service visit. Depending on your patience (and laundry needing to be done) this could be the beginning of a very unpleasant customer experience.

But what if that same manufacturer was able to pull up your model, and already knew they had visited you a year ago with a similar issue. How might your experience be impacted if they were to tell you there was a 90 percent first-time fix rate for your specific dryer and a technician would be able to show up with the specific parts needed to fix your issue?

This is the type of service that customers want and are starting to expect.

It is easy to see how putting the right information in a service technicians’ hands at the right time is so important.

Service technicians want to be able to see service information and technical service bulletins. They want to see information on the job and have access to just in time training. They have a desire for formal training, tech assist helpdesks and hotlines, and safety instructions.

So how do we enable and empower technicians to optimize service experiences and exceed customer expectations?

Here are some of the best practices that we have gathered:

1. 1. Provide access to technical/service parts information when technicians need it
2. 2. Make that information easy to search
3. 3. Supply accurate product and configuration information including all parts and service history
4. 4. Enable easy ways of ordering parts
5. 5. Offer just in time training/help

‘Smart’ service management is your key to success.

Your service information needs to be managed at a network level. This ensures that all your players in the service web have access to the right information, at the moment they need it.

Adding a modern layer of accessibility to your information is a critical part of ensuring your service network can operate efficiently and effectively.  This is what will help you drive positive customer experiences throughout your product lifecycle.

We offer the technology solutions and technical expertise to make real-time service information delivery a reality. Contact us to learn more about our Product Development Information Services group, PTC’s Arbortext and Service Lifecycle Management technologies, and the PLM solutions that can effectively link together your product data and service part information.

The Internet of Things (IoT) is transforming the way companies design, manufacture, and service their products and manufacturing floors. ‘Service’ is one of the most notable areas to be impacted by this wave of technology and connected devices. Monitoring assets in the field and on the shop floor gives service technicians access to usage, error, and predictive analytics prior to a repair. As companies continue to adopt the IoT, more organizations are satisfying the prerequisites to easily deploy augmented reality for service.

With the convergence of the digital and physical worlds, manufacturers are using augmented reality as a tool to help improve their service capabilities. Augmented Reality (AR) can deliver the right information at the very moment that it’s needed on the manufacturing floor so that field service technicians and other factory workers can reduce errors, enhance efficiencies, and improve productivity. AR also allows for content to be presented in arguably the most contextual way possible. When accurate information is presented over real-world devices there is little room for error and misunderstanding.

If field service technicians aren’t available to be on-site for a critical situation, then technicians can remotely assist customers with the help of AR. Customers will be able to observe service manuals with interactive 3D animations to disassemble components or work on equipment with which they’re unfamiliar with. If the users need further help, then the experienced field service technician can walk users through instructions while steaming the user’s device view in real time.

Augmented Reality Barriers to Entry

Your service and parts information have to be accurate and up-to-date in order to fully benefit from an augmented reality investment. Making sure your organization has a reliable Service Lifecycle Management system in place is the first step to digital transformation. Without accurate information on parts and equipment, field service technicians could replace the wrong part or be confronted with an outdated, undocumented design.

In order to be labeled a “smart connected enterprise,” a company should have a strategy to connect all of their assets and data; this includes technical publications. Connected technical illustrations have the power to show the current status for every part and piece of equipment. For example, if a mechanic could see a 3D representation of a vehicle’s carburetor and view critical metrics it would help them understand the potential for repairs or future failure.

Your organization needs to be IoT ready – meaning that there needs to be a strategy in place to input sensors on products and equipment. The Internet of Things allows products and assets to send alerts to a maintenance system that assigns a field service technician to perform a repair. Without the sensors that relay information about the status of those parts, and accurate 3D representations, augmented reality devices would be useless because there would be no relevant or up-to-date information to leverage in the field.

The IoT and Augmented Reality are transforming service and enhancing the field service process. Check out EAC’s solutions to see how you can start using AR today.

Having more technical illustrations than information is beneficial in many ways—and the solution to do so is easier than you think.

Here’s why you should be using more technical illustrations and the best way to create them.

Technical Illustrations are Easy to Understand

We all know the saying “ a picture paints a thousand words”—and in this case, it’s more than true.

It’s much easier to interpret a picture than to understand and read through lots of text. Using illustrations in tech pubs, user manuals, and service manuals reduce user errors.

Illustrations Take Away the Need for Text

Have you ever bought anything from Ikea? Sure you have! They sell their flat pack furniture all over the globe using the same manuals. That is the power of illustrations. You can drastically reduce the amount of text that is needed by producing illustrations.

Using Technical Illustrations Reduces the Need for Translation

With less text that is needed or used, you can reduce your translation costs.

So Why Doesn’t Everyone Use Illustrations?

The traditional process to create illustrations is time-consuming and can be froth with problems.

Let me illustrate it for you.

Odds are if you are using the traditional illustration process, your technical illustrators most likely work with engineers to get snapshots of CAD information to use in illustrations.

These snapshots are usually static because they are captured at only a moment in time, usually near the end of the product development process.

Because the illustrations are static, they are not always easy to interpret. This means the text is still required to properly convey the information.

If your snapshots were taken at the end of the product development process because there was ‘ less likelihood of the product changing’ – you could be delaying your shipment process.

Often a product cannot ship until the technical information that is associated with it is ready to ship with the product.

Now consider all the back and forth communication between both the engineering department and the illustration group.

Traditional illustrations are difficult to keep up to date. Commonly the illustrator needs to go back to the engineer for updates every time there is a change to the product.

If at any time there is a miscommunication, your illustrations could easily become inaccurate; exposing your organization to the risk of unsatisfied customers, frustrated field technicians, and the possibility of lawsuits.

It’s easy to see why the traditional methods to create illustrations are downright time consuming and prone to error.

So How Can You Make Technical Illustrations Easily?

The answer is Creo Illustrate.

Creo Illustrate leverages CAD data to create illustrations that, depending on your PDM/PLM setup, maintain an associative link to the original CAD data.

This means any changes you make with your CAD data can automatically update all your illustrations and possibly your publications.

With Creo Illustrate you have the ability to start creating illustrations early on in the product development process, with a guarantee that your illustrations are always kept up-to-date. Start developing product documentation during the product development process instead of after the product development process.

See Creo Illustrate in action! Watch this short video.

Service organizations typically receive recurring revenue, less fixed capital, and higher margins than strictly product-centric businesses. Aftermarket services now account for almost 24% of manufacturers’ total revenue and 40% to 80% of their total profits (Pollack, B., PTC Video: Transforming Your Service Organization with SLM (part 3 of 3)). When executed properly, after-sales service and support can provide increased revenue and invaluable customer satisfaction and loyalty.

Customer relationships are both a huge benefit and a huge risk.  Companies without a comprehensive plan to ensure high customer satisfaction often jeopardize customer relationships and risk affecting their company brand. Businesses often suffer when they overlook their role in service performance. Why focus solely on putting your product into the hands of customers? Why not also focus on service, and manage the performance of your products to ensure high customer satisfaction?

Customer Satisfaction Matters

Consumers who are willing to pay a premium for a product are looking for a company that provides the best value. If your company cannot deliver the value that your customer is willing to pay for, then you are going to disappoint that customer.

To build and maintain high customer satisfaction, companies need to look beyond traditional approaches.  It is no longer sufficient to provide good customer service by staffing a call center for customer support.  Customers need more than a call center or email.  They need their product to provide that expected value and perform well.  Businesses need to figure out how to deliver that value, maintain high product performance, and keep a happy customer.

Service as the Main Course

Viewing service as an extension of the product can help companies deliver added value and improve customer satisfaction. So what, then, is the hesitation that executives face when delivering service as a strategy in their organization?

Making strategic decisions can be challenging when confronted with numerous variables. Employing an effective service strategy can be especially challenging when organizations are divided into separate silos, with each department concerned only with its own objectives but missing the main objective: the customer.

To execute a service strategy well, companies must look to transform their current approach to service. They must optimize service performance and service functions across all departments and ensure everyone is working collaboratively to deliver a unified service experience that joins parts, product and service information, remote service, and predictive analytics that maximizes the product value to each customer.

Service Lifecycle Management (SLM) is the solution to a service transformation within an organization. SLM provides a platform to deliver on-demand parts, accurate and relevant product and service information, global remote service, and predictive analytics for maximum product performance.

The Right-Sized Service Lifecycle Management Solutions

Service excellence prepares your organization for years of satisfied customers and service related revenue streams. Don’t miss out on revenue opportunities and the chance to provide your company with a competitive advantage. Apply service as a strategy within your organization.

We have an entire team that is dedicated to helping you manage service life cycle.

• optimizing performance with smart connected products
• minimizing downtime with predictive analytics
• provide access to accurate and relevant documentation, illustrations, and part lists
• improving service response time and first-time fix rates
• optimizing service parts availability and pricing
• paying for product performance with product-as-a-service (PaaS) models