I have been working with airline operating and training manuals for many years, and, as you can imagine, I have seen manuals put together in some very interesting ways. I have seen manuals that are so beautiful and well-organized that looking at them makes me feel all warm and fuzzy on the inside. I have also seen manuals that are so ugly and disorganized that all I want to do is put them out of their misery!
Whenever we bring on a new Jetstream customer, the first thing we do is analyze their manuals. More often than not, the first recommendation I make is to let us convert their manuals into FrameMaker if they aren’t already using that particular format. There are many reasons why this is a good idea.
During the conversion process, the manuals are standardized. The formatting becomes consistent throughout each manual. Every different paragraph style used is used exactly the same way throughout the manual. If the airline standard is to spell “crewmember” as one word and not “crew member” as two words, we go through the manual and ensure that type of consistency is used.
When a manual is converted into FrameMaker, we can then generate automatic Tables of Contents, Lists of Effective Pages, Indices, and Appendices. This is a real time saver as each time the manual is revised, each of these files is updated automatically by the click of a button. As these files are auto-generated, there is no chance of error. This ultimately saves the YOU time and expense as updating these types of files only takes a few moments instead of hours compared to doing it manually.
A beautifully tagged and formatted FrameMaker book can then be turned into a fully functional PDF that is filled with bookmarks and linked pages, as we do future revisions. This also becomes a real time saver for you, because it only takes us a few minutes to create a bookmarked PDF, which you can easily navigate around in. There’s no hassle: the software does it all for us.
When we start conversion projects, we work with each organization to develop customized, standardized templates that will be used across all manuals and departments. That way, every manual has a similar look and feel. Imagine picking up an MD80 AOM, an A320 AOM, and a B757 AOM and each is formatted in exactly the same way. A pilot can quickly and easily find what he or she is looking for because it is always located in the same place. Also, viewing a manual in a well constructed PDF is quick, simple, and completely correct as it is an automatically generated document.
So the next time you look through your manuals, ask yourself if it is time for them to get a makeover. Send them to me here at JETPUBS and I would be more than happy to provide you with our recommendations and template suggestions.
Diane Halweg
Director of Manuals Development, JETPUBS Inc.
DH*****@je*****.com