Technical publications that support the operation and maintenance of complex assets in the aerospace and defense industries play an important role in operational support and mission achievement. These technology bars represent the organizational knowledge of the organization. As senior employees retire and accumulate rich knowledge with them, these organizations realize that technical publications are crucial for maintaining the productivity of new team members. Fortunately, modern technology is opening up new avenues to utilize technology bars in a productive and innovative way.

Knowledge investment is always the greatest profit. "- Benjamin Franklin

I sat down with Lou Iuppa, Vice President of Government for SDL's Aviation and Defense Business Unit, to discuss the trends that his industry contacts are sharing with him.

Bob Hogg: Lou, let's talk directly. What is the primary issue you are discussing with aerospace and defense clients these days?

Lou Iuppa: As I heard from industry contacts, the term 'efficiency' keeps coming up - the efficiency of the entire technology content supply chain. This is about the efficiency of creating, delivering, understanding, and utilizing technical knowledge at every step of the product and service lifecycle.

BH: Can you provide some examples about efficiency? Perhaps starting with 'effectively utilizing technological knowledge'?

Li: Historically, technology bars have been passively used in the maintenance process. When problems or tasks arise, generate work orders using the required parts and tools, and allocate technology to complete the work. Technicians can refer to technical publications in written form or through IETM. In other words, information is passively pulled into the process rather than actively pushed.

As we move further towards the Fourth Industrial Revolution, assets are becoming increasingly intelligent through innovations such as the Internet of Things, artificial intelligence, big data analytics, remote diagnostics, and other emerging technologies. Due to the fact that assets themselves can now communicate intelligently with digital content, they can proactively provide technical knowledge. For example, our clients have embedded our technology into asset platforms, so diagnostic data from the technology bar can be used in conjunction with in car monitoring systems to identify emerging issues. The content on this topic is far beyond my ability, so I suggest reviewing my white paper, which explains how technical content can help with predictive and state based maintenance enhancements (CBM+).

BH: How does technical information contribute to effective understanding? What drives demand?

Li: There is a global shortage of technical talent in the labor force. Recent studies have shown that 78% of organizations currently encounter difficulties in hiring technical personnel, leading to a reliance on overtime and other temporary measures. Although the urgency has decreased due to Covid-19, the problem has not disappeared and will challenge the A&D industry in the near future.

In addition to labor shortages, 80% of operations, maintenance, and support personnel in the global aerospace and defense industry speak English, but all aviation technical documents are in English. Do you know that training non-native English speakers can take up to two years to establish proficiency in Simplified Technical English or STE?

As a result, I have instructed some of my defense manufacturing clients to focus on advances in machine translation to provide bilingual technical publications in their foreign military sales or FMS programs. FMS product support is another example, as email, real-time chat, and document translation are now crucial when exchanging information between FMS customers and their factory support representatives.

BH: What about further promoting the content supply chain - creation and delivery process? How can these become more efficient?

Li: This is really focused on defense manufacturers and how they simplify and standardize plans throughout the entire enterprise and even the entire supply chain. Integrating its technical publication applications into general software will bring many benefits, including cross program improvements in agility, quality, and security. Content collaboration and reuse will increase, while IT support costs will decrease. Consolidating reports becomes possible, providing deeper insights. Then, these features can be extended to their providers to simplify data exchange throughout the entire extended supply chain.

Both the US Navy and the US Air Force have seen the value of rationalization and consolidation. The Navy uses the standard NAVSEA Integrated Release Process (SNIPP), while the Air Force uses the Technology Order Writing and Release (TOAP) solution. Both of these tasks are based on SDL Contenta Publishing Suite. Thank you, Lou. That's a great insight.