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Data Renaissance Suite™
by Continental DataGraphics Ltd

The Issues: To meet the demands of a customer driven marketplace, manufacturers of complex equipment are increasingly required to customize their products and extend product life cycles.

Manufacturers are under pressure from their customers to provide support services to enable them to:

• realize productivity gains by maximizing equipment availability
• achieve optimum asset availability in a cost-efficient manner.

The costs of producing equipment support documentation – usually a customer entitlement – remain staggering. Manufacturers can no longer cost-effectively support these complex products in traditional paper based information environments. Yet simple electronic data distribution does not address the problems of redundant authoring, change management, configuration control, or the long production cycle from an engineering change to data publication.

Ironically, expensive false removal and replacement of components is still less costly for operators than equipment down time resulting from lengthy fault tracing. Few existing technical data support tools provide needed diagnostic and electronic performance support at the point of use. Even fewer systems enable valuable field data to flow back to the manufacturer.

Data Renaissance Suite™ was specifically designed as a solution to these technical data management problems often faced by manufacturers and their equipment operators. The world-class capabilities of the Data Renaissance Suite™ have been demonstrated through award winning deployments of Interactive Electronic Technical Manuals for the Apache Longbow and F/A-18 programs. DRS is adaptable to accommodate technical data support requirements for commercial, non-military equipment as well.

The Solution

The Data Renaissance Suite™ (DRS) is a suite of commercial software tools specifically designed to lower the life cycle cost of maintenance activities and associated technical data for critical, complex equipment and systems. Fully implemented, the DRS provides equipment manufacturers with:

an authoring environment to maintain configuration control of technical data.
authoring, filtering, publication and updates of elements relevant to a specific equipment configuration.
linking of elements with parts information, training, supplemental texts, graphic elements and tool tips.
capabilities to link DRS to other related applications.

DRS also provides sophisticated equipment maintenance troubleshooting tools to support both manufacturers and operators, including:

an automated means to gather electronic fault and system state data from embedded software on equipment, and combine it with operator information (gathered interactively) to help isolate components requiring servicing.
a means to enable maintenance personnel to be led through interactive troubleshooting to correctly identify, remove, repair and replace the faulty sub - assembly, unit, wire, or part.
the ability for authoring, maintenance and engineering departments to collect audit trails and metrics regarding maintenance actions and equipment reliability.

Quill 21™ IETM Authoring System

Quill 21 is an authoring system for Class IV/V Interactive Electronic Technical Manuals (IETM). Quill 21 is extremely scalable, and has proven itself capable of handling more than 60 concurrent users authoring in the same IETM database. The Quill 21 system consists of three main components - an authoring system, a database (QRDB) and a presentation system (Data Courier). Technical authors are able to use Quill’s comprehensive set of editing tools to create and/or define low level components in the electronic manual, including steps, cautions, parts, consumables, and graphics.

Quill 21 also offers enriched features, such as:

Template based forms and menu driven selections; no original SGML or XML authoring is required.
Quill Task Flow Editor, a graphical tool that the author uses to create flow charts that define the order of the steps for each maintenance task.
Management of multipicture CGM files. Graphics can be linked to any object, including tasks, steps, parts, descriptive information, other graphics, etc.

Quill Task Flow Editor
“Hotspotting” capabilities can be added to CGM files from engineering CAD systems. Authors can turn on hotspots to fit the context in which the graphic is used.

The CGM graphics management and hotspotting capabilities in the Quill 21 system have proven to be highly effective in promoting data reuse. As an example, a single CGM file in the F/A-18 Super Hornet IETM database contains more than 4,000 links.

Diagnostic Expert™

Diagnostic Expert™ permits integration of expert diagnostics and electronic technical data into a customer’s maintenance infrastructure.

Some of the highlights of the Diagnostic Expert system include:

Automatic capture of symptom data during system operation. Symptom data is combined with operator observations.
Automated discrepancy analysis, integrated with additional fault reasoners such as model-based diagnostics or Baysian networks to support troubleshooting processes.
Complex diagnostic operations are performed, and failed components are identified at the click of a mouse.
Maintenance tasks are automatically recommended based on diagnostic results. Users are directed to a specific entry point in the IETM or hyperlinked to other electronic manuals to support the specific procedure identified.

Data Courier™ and Data Courier Web™ Presentation Systems

Data Courier™ and Data Courier Web™ are the presentation systems for electronic technical manuals authored in Quill 21™. Data Courier™ uses a database management system to handle a vast amount of technical data in a very space-efficient manner. For example, the IETM for the F/A-18 E/F contained the equivalent of 90,000 pages of paper technical manuals, yet was delivered on a single CD-ROM.

Some of the capabilities offered by Data Courier include:

Multiple types of information associated with a single task or procedure (such as pin arrangement graphics, parts listings, and locator graphics) are assembled “on the fly” and displayed simultaneously in side by side presentation panes.
Graphics system based upon multipicture CGM files, effective for storage of large amounts of information in small amounts of memory space.
Enables deployment of electronic technical manuals for use in thefield via laptop computers and ruggedized portable PCs.
Users are able to navigate through data at an expert level or step down through novice detail.
Supports any type of multimedia file compatible with the host computer, via linked process calls to appropriate off-the-shelf software.

Wiring Illuminator™

Wiring Illuminator™ is a digital wiring data system tool that significantly reduces the time, effort and associated cost of troubleshooting complex wiring. A wide variety of information from wiring diagrams and wiring manuals can be captured and dynamically displayed within Wiring Illuminator as a single integrated source of wiring data.

Some of the features supported by Wiring Illuminator include:

Wiring information stored in a database, retrieved as requested by the technician and filtered for application to the particular equipment being serviced.
Data is formatted and displayed in any combination of wiring diagram, pin listing and/or wire listing.
Technicians are presented only with information relevant to the job at hand. No more need to sift through multi-page foldouts and interpret system configuration information.
Locator graphics, pin arrangement graphics, parts listing and drawing notes are only a click away, displayed simultaneously in a side by side presentation panes interface.

Wiring Illuminator™ Circuit Tracing Function

Intelligent Graphics

Intelligent Graphics are interactive schematics or wiring diagrams that are created by mining information from static wiring diagrams to produce intelligent vector graphics. Wiring Illuminator’s database utilizes extensive links to intelligent graphics, providing these powerful capabilities:

Circuit tracing is provided, such that selecting a wire or other component in the graphic causes its entire signal path to be visually highlighted.
Active components, such as switches and circuit breakers, operate just like the physical components they represent.
Selecting a wire or other component in the intelligent graphic also causes Wiring Illuminator to dynamically update its other data views to reflect the selection.

Multipanel Display In Wiring Illuminator™

Integration with External Systems

Wiring Illuminator can be executed as a standalone application. It also is designed to support an interface with other applications in the maintenance environment. For example, Wiring Illuminator can accommodate links to access external centralized maintenance management systems to obtain configuration and optional equipment information.

A New Approach to Technical Data

As its name implies, the Data Renaissance Suite was designed as a new approach to make better use of existing technical data in a dynamic fashion across the entire organization.

DRS is one of the few comprehensive technical data management solutions available today that enables technical data to flow from its inception in the engineering department, through the technical manuals authoring process, and ultimately to the end users of the data itself. However, delivery of the data is not the end point, as DRS also provides powerful capabilities to facilitate interactive exchange and capture of equipment fault and troubleshooting information, communicated between the authors and end users of technical data.

To find out how Data Renaissance Suite can revitalize your technical data management processes, visit the DRS information web site at www.ietm.biz, or write to us at .

For more information about Continental DataGraphics, visit our web site at www.cdgnow.com.

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