Year of collaboration
2013
Context
British American Tobacco is a British multinational tobacco company headquartered in London, United Kingdom. It is one of the world’s five largest tobacco companies. It has a market-leading position in over 50 countries and operations in around 180 countries.
Aim: To have clear instruction manuals available in different languages
The production of a new machine, destined for more than one country, revealed the need for comprehensive instruction manuals which had to be available in English and Portuguese initially, and potentially several other languages in the future.
Challenges
The complexity of machinery and compliance with international standards.
Solution: Rewriting and reorganising the content, reusing modules
3di Content Writing Team
- Ensured what information was needed to install, operate and maintain the equipment, and to comply with the EC Machinery Directive.
- Thought about how to make it easy for the engineers to share their knowledge, and how to make maintaining and translating the manuals easy.
- Created a clear structure, hierarchy, layout and process. The combination of text, photos, graphics, system and circuit diagrams, tables and safety icons needed to be clear, consistent and efficient to translate.
- Implemented tools needed to support the modular nature of the product, review and version control, and a scalable numbering system.
- Provided a consistent and efficient working model throughout the machine development period.
Result
- Final modular suite of 21 manuals ready for instruction manuals translation
- Proven service model ready for managing updates and replicating the success for other languages, and other products.
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Testimonial
“We’ve seen a real benefit from working with 3di. We’re very pleased with the finished document set and would consider it world-class.”