Automated data conversions for technical manuals

Manufacturers of aircrafts and systems produce many technical documents for their maintenance and operation. Most of them follow different global standards for aerospace technical documentation, like iSpec2200, ATA 100, ASD-STE100 etc. Today, most of the manufacturers are adopting S1000D standard, developed by Aerospace and Defense Industries Association of Europe (ASD). S1000D presents significant advantages over previous data models as it follows a modular structure offering better data interoperability, content reuse and multi-channel delivery. S1000D consists of Data Modules having an Extensible Markup Language (XML) structure.

Most aircraft manufacturers want to move to the new S1000D standards by migrating their legacy data and content from their older format to S1000D. However, converting the existing content to the new format is not an easy task as it involves migrating critical information like table structures, business rules, workflow process etc. All these data must be manually converted which takes muchtime to complete. In a bid to meet with the stringent timelines, most companies rush into conversion without having any proper plan and end up with paying for it over time.

Our customer, a leading European aircraft manufacturer, was in the process of migrating their technical documentation from their existing CTG 2.2 format to the ASD S1000D format. Our umlaut team based in India proposed to automate the conversion process with a new tool – the Data Migration Tool. The customer appreciated the concept of automating the migration process as it helped them to save time and create quality data. Our umlaut engineers completed the tool development within 4 months with a user friendly interface including a live logger and color badges for error/ warning logs. The tool helped the customer to drastically improve the data module quality while migrating from their older standard to S1000D.

The customer was so impressed with the technical expertise and professionalism exhibited by the engineers of umlaut India that they extended the scope of the project to develop another tool for validating their legacy data migrated to S1000D standards.