Excosoft: Publishing Manuals

"We have used XEP for several years now, in widely varying production environments. I can warmly recommend the product, not only because of its excellence and competitive pricing but also because of the amazingly high level of support."

Richard Vincent, Senior Consultant, Excosoft AB

"This case history describes a large manufacturing company's need for a documentation management system, the requirements that were defined for the system, and the solution that was selected to meet those needs. The article then provides information about the solution and its implementation". Read more...

Mats Broberg, Technical documentation manager, FLIR Systems

Excosoft specializes in document management processes — structuring, visualisation, refinement and re-use. Their customers range from small businesses to large corporations and government agencies. Their solutions are based on standards such as XML, XSL and SVG and are both client and server based and they also maintain a proprietary hierarchical XML editor and their own visioning software.

A documentation solution Excosoft implemented for one of its customers — FLIR Systems, a global leader in the infrared camera market — was designed to speed up production and reduce translation costs. The sole member of Flir's documentation team was struggling with traditional publishing tools and desperately needed an automated solution. Not only did he need to deliver a considerable number of customer manuals, but he needed to do it in many different languages, including Chinese! However good an XML based document management system might be, if the final goal is published manuals the whole thing falls flat on its face without a competent rendering engine.

• Number of manuals: 300 (growing by approx. 20% per year)
• Number of languages: 17
• Documentation staff: 1 person
• Formatting speed: 11,400 pages per hour
• Page formattings per revision of all manuals for the two largest product families: approx. 30,000—40,000 pages.
• Page formattings of all manuals for the two largest product families: Approx 150,000—200,000 pages.
• Real number of page formattings per year of all manuals for all product families: Approx 250,000—300,000 pages.
• Manuals dispatched from FLIR each year: 7000—8000.

"We have used XEP for several years now, in widely varying production environments. I can warmly recommend the product, not only because of its excellence and competitive pricing but also because of the amazingly high level of support. Problems we have had with some esoteric issues have been fixed promptly, sometimes within a matter of hours!"