18 | WHITE PAPER: INFOTRUST | AIRCRAFT IT MRO | AUGUST-SEPTEMBER 2013
A BRIEF HISTORY OF INFORMATION EXCHANGE STANDARDS IN CIVIL AVIATION
Technical Information Management in the 21st Century
The right language in the right context
Tim Larson, chief product owner for TechSight/X suite of products at InfoTrust Group considers Aircraft Technical Publication Standards — who they impact and why
T
HE FIRST ARTICLE on this topic (published Aircraft IT MRO volume 2 issue 3 — June 2013), offered a brief overview of trends impacting civil aviation in the 21st century, including the evolution of information exchange standards. Information exchange standards are used to make sharing information easier than it would be if every contributor to the technical information lifecycle — OEMs, their suppliers, airlines, and MROs — produced and managed information according to its own methods. Without a common method for creating, managing, and delivering information, everyone in the ecosystem would be slowed down and the quality of information would greatly suffer. In fact, in industries like civil aviation — where timeliness and accuracy of information is critical in order to comply with regulatory requirements designed to ensure safe operation of aircraft as well as maximize the time aircraft are in service — the use of information exchange standards is paramount. A brief history of information exchange standards in civil aviation brings us to one of today’s most significant challenges for all players in the lifecycle of technical information: the introduction of the S1000D information standard and the ability to operate in a multi-spec content ecosystem.
For the past decade, manufacturers and airlines have based their maintenance and engineering information on ATA iSpec 2200. This specification was developed by the Air Transport Association (ATA) as a global aviation industry standard for the content, structure, and electronic exchange of aircraft engineering and maintenance information. The specification was introduced largely to address the massive volumes of paper required to produce multiple manuals and publications that accompany every aircraft. ATA iSpec 2200 reduced dependence on paper by providing a common way to enable the electronic use of maintenance and engineering information in the aerospace industry. Its application moved maintenance and engineering documentation from paper to electronic format and it has been the dominant specification used in the aerospace industry for the past decade. During this time the Internet came into its own, only to be overcome by the more recent explosion of mobile devices that are leading the transition from the PC era to a post-PC era, and new generation aircraft such as Airbus’ A350 and Boeing’s 787 Dreamliner that have crossed new boundaries with the use of ‘e-enabled’ aircraft.
INFORMATION HANDLING IN A DIGITAL ERA — THE CASE FOR REUSABLE CONTENT COMPONENTS AND THE ORIGIN OF S1000D
Easy, instant access to information has changed the way organizations manage this vital business component. People expect to find information where they want it — in print/PDF, on websites, on smartphones and tablets — when they want it. No industry can today afford to delay the quick delivery of reliable information in all the ways that consumers of that information expect. In response, industries for which information is a critical part of their business have revolutionized the way they create, manage, and distribute it. They have moved from a downstream, document centric focus on the output of monolithic publications to an information or content centric focus on the way information is created upstream. By shifting the focus from how information is packaged on the backend to how it is created or authored on the front end, these organizations are reaping benefits in the productivity of managing information throughout its lifecycle as well as improvements in information accuracy and consistency. These benefits stem from the origin of content itself when it is created as structured, or media- and formatindependent, XML (extensible markup language). XML is based on the creation of small, reusable content components. Each component has related metadata or information about it that can be used to determine its relevance for a publication. Metadata also makes it easy to search for and quickly find
information. And because XML content components are not associated with a format or publication type, they can be assembled automatically, on demand, for multiple publications and formats — PDF, Web, or mobile.
USING CONTENT COMPONENTS IN THE AEROSPACE INDUSTRY
Recognizing the need to manage the voluminous amounts of technical information about aircraft in a more nimble way, in 2004 the ATA e-Business Strategic Planning Team tasked a group of its members representing manufacturers and airlines to evaluate the potential of using S1000D — an XML or component based information exchange standard first developed by the AeroSpace and Defence Industries Association of Europe (ASD) for the defense industry. WHAT IS S1000D?
S1000D is an international specification for technical publications, utilizing a Common Source Database. It was originally introduced to the European community by the Association Européenne de Constructeurs de Matériel Aérospacial, representing the aerospace industry.1 Since its inception over 20 years ago, S1000D has grown to where it is now used widely around the world. Currently, its uses include, defense systems — including land, sea, and air products — civil aviation products, construction industry products, and ship industry products.2
The basic principles of S1000D are: • Information produced in accordance with the standard is in a modular form called a ‘data module’; • A data module is the smallest, self-contained information unit within a technical publication; • A data module must have sense and meaning when viewed without any supporting data other than graphics; • All data modules are stored and managed in a Common Source Data Base (CSDB); • Using a CSDB allows for output in either a page oriented or Interactive Electronic Technical Publication (IETP) that is consistent regardless of the IT platform used; • Individual data modules can be used many times in output3. The benefits of using a modular approach are multifold and include: • Information consistency: Many different output forms can be generated from a single data source. • Cost savings: Achieved by reusing a single data module rather than recreating information each time it is required and by reducing the cost to maintain technical information.