A manufacturer that produces a product with 1000 variants has a big problem: Is he supposed to create and manage 1000 user manuals? One solution could be modularisation. A pool of general and product-specific modules could serve as a basis for assembling information units (components) into user manuals. A pool of hundreds of modules, however, presents the problem of indexing, managing and finding the modules required in a specific context.

The best solution is the combined use of XML based content together with a content management system. Product-specific content will be marked as a variant and filtered in or out of the user manual at production time.

An extreme scenario would be one large master module containing all variants that would allow for creating thousands of product-specific user manuals by variant filtering.

At the "DokuForum 2008" (28th February 2008, Hamburg) Ovidius and ZINDEL will present jointly how to deal with variant management in theory and practice.

In close cooperation with ZINDEL Ovidius attends customers that create technical documentation with TCToolbox. While Ovidius represents the technical side in content management systems ZINDEL provides expertise in authoring and creating technical documentation. ZINDEL focuses on the creation of user manuals, electronically compiled spare parts lists, technical illustrations, computer animation, training material and translation as well as browser-based document distribution.

For more information on ZINDEL and the "DokuForum 2008" visit: http://www.zindel.de

Are you looking for further information on variant management? Request our white paper "Divide and conquer".

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