Hi Ricki:
These are critical operational manuals you are thinking of updating, right?
No matter what updates you do, we ALWAYS replace the entire manual with each
update.
The reason has nothing to do with technology, and everything to do with
"people". People simply never insert the replacement pages. This means
that your critical procedural manuals get into an "unknown" state, each copy
slightly different. If you don't believe me, take a walk through the
operational divisions of your company. See all those sad little piles of
replacement pages sitting on the shelves? Yep: they never get into the
manuals. Operations staff simply haven't got the time...
To see what happens next, click he
http://www.cch.com.au/fe_ps_details....id=1080&bhcp=1
If you Google for "Esso Longford Gas Melbourne" you will get a working
demonstration of how a company managed to save nearly a hundred dollars in
the cost of paper by maintaining their procedure manuals using page
replacement. They then spent $2,000,000.00 in fines, $32,500,000.00 in
compensation, and caused industry losses of $1,300,000,000.00.
The Exxon Board has subsequently had great difficulty convincing its
shareholders that this was a good economic decision :-)
Do not bother marking the dates in the text where changes have been made.
That only makes the manual hard to read, and people trying to use it
couldn't give a stuff when it updated, so long as it is now correct.
However, you need to keep an accurate record in the documentation section of
WHO updated WHAT, WHEN, and WHY. I suggest that you make a spreadsheet
recording each change.
The Intranet copy can be produced by Saving the printed copy to HTML. Split
it into chunks at each heading so the thing loads in a reasonable time. On
the intranet, there will be no headers or footers: HTML doesn't have them.
You can very quickly use Word to save as a website if you know how. I can
save a 500-page manual to a website in less than four hours. That's about
the budget you will get to do this job, and with the costs that low, you can
afford to maintain the intranet every time you update the paper copy.
It is critical that the intranet version that is quick and cheap to produce.
Trying to build it as a proper website simply costs far too much: you will
never get approval for the cost or effort involved, nobody will ever
maintain it, and thus nobody will ever use it. Don't go there :-)
Hope this helps
On 8/7/06 11:36 PM, in article
, "Ricki
Miles" wrote:
I am using Word XP and need to maintain several manuals ("Emergency
Preparedness Plans" and "Operation, Maintenance and Surveillance" manuals)
for generating stations.
There are essentially two levels of updates: simple and comprehensive. The
simple updates cover changes to names and contact info, org charts, and
responsibilities and these can be (should be) carried out at least annually.
The more comprehensive updates involve more significant revisions to and
rewriting of the text and take a fair bit more time to complete. The pages
all have a date of when the manual was issued in the footer. The manuals
have a log or revision record in the appendices to track changes.
What is a reasonable process for making minor updates (i.e., replace only a
few pages of the manual) so that we don't have to reprint the entire manual
every time a revision is made? I would think that the revised pages having
the new date of revision in the footer, replace the old page, and that those
pages are identified in the revision log. The title page (cover page) also
contains a date that would need to be updated. How do you minimize confusion
when some of the pages in the manual have differing dates from one another
and from the title page? What about the major revisions?
The manuals are also provided on a company intranet. Should the electronic
manual be identical (with respect to varying dates in the footers) as the
hard copy?
TIA,
Ricki
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John McGhie
Microsoft MVP, Word and Word for Macintosh. Consultant Technical Writer
Sydney, Australia +61 (0) 4 1209 1410