Distribution Sponsored by empolis GmbH
NETTING IT OUT
Airbus, producer of Airbus airliners since 1970, is a multinational division
of EADS employing 57,000 people in France, Germany, Spain, and the UK. When
Airbus began work on the A380 Superjumbo aircraft, it also began work on building
a new documentation system. The PDF files and paper used for past airliner
documentation could not adequately address a product that would require over
a million pages of customized documentation and a thousand people in four countries
developing the content.
Axel Sellmer, Manager IS for Repair and Customer Services Germany, and his
team of 15 staff and about two dozen external experts, developed the software
and systems for technical documentation for all of Airbus. This new system
has a layered technology architecture and an atomic information architecture.
Together, these architectures support the wide distribution of workers and
the high degree of scalability demanded by the A380 documentation projects.
This report describes the exacting requirements of the A380 documentation
projects and the systems Axel’s team developed to satisfy those requirements.
We’d like to acknowledge and thank Axel Sellmer for all his help in
providing information and insight for this report.
AIRBUS: PRECISION PRODUCT, PRECISION DOCUMENTATION
Introduction to Airbus
The aircraft known as the Airbus was first created in 1970. As of December
2007, there were 4,794 in operation out of 5017 delivered. An Airbus model
has a long life: the A300 was introduced in 1972, and the last one was manufactured
in 2007. Individual aircraft may be in commercial service for five decades
or more.
Airbus itself is a division of the European Aeronautic Defense and Space Company,
which has 116,805 employees in France, Germany, UK, Spain, USA, and other
countries. Airbus operates from satellites in four countries: France, UK,
Spain, and Germany. It has 57,000 employees. Factories in all four countries
produce sections of the aircraft, which are brought to Toulouse, France for
final assembly. In 2007, Airbus shipped 453 aircraft.
A380: Debut of Highly Complex Product
The A380 is Airbus’s super jumbo aircraft. The world’s largest
civil airliner, with a takeoff weight of 590 metric tons, it can carry 525
passengers and has a range of 15,000 kilometers. The first aircraft entered
production in January 2002; in October of 2003 all parts were transported to
Toulouse for assembly; and in March 2005 Singapore Airlines pilots made their
first A380 test flight. The first customer delivery of an A380 was to Singapore
Airlines in October 2007. Today there are 187 on order, and two have been delivered
to Singapore Airlines.
In round numbers, the A380 is comprised of millions of parts, provided by 3,000
suppliers; there are 100 major assemblies in an aircraft.
Each aircraft must, by regulatory fiat, be accompanied by comprehensive documentation.
The scope and structure of this documentation is stipulated in an industry
standard, which describes roughly 100 manuals for the repair and maintenance
of each aircraft. The documentation for a single aircraft model is so voluminous
that, if printed, its weight would require two airliners to transport it.
Documentation Platform for the Repair Domain
©
2008 empolis
Illustration 1. The documentation platform for the Repair Domain is comprised
of four main layers: the foundational Service Platform, and, above it, the
Authoring Environment, Data Assembly, and Publication.
SUPERJUMBO DOCUMENTATION
Goals for Documentation System
ATA Specification iSpec 2200 is the industry standard that dictates the format
and structure of digital documentation for an aircraft. The ATA is the Air
Transport Association, an industry group whose members are airlines and airline
suppliers. The 100 manuals align with the aircraft structure, with one for
each of the major assemblies. Documentation is divided into two interrelated
domains: repair and maintenance. The documentation must be tested and certified,
and delivered to customers in SGML,
Having 100 printed manuals on hand, each containing as many as 50,000 pages,
requires substantial space; dedication to constant filing of updates; and
the leisure to flip through pages looking for the right information. None
of these criteria are likely to be met in a repair hangar. As a result, fleet
operators have developed online systems that deliver repair information on
all types of aircraft to maintenance workers. These online systems must import
documentation from aircraft manufacturers and other suppliers.
In 1999, coinciding with the launch of the A380, Airbus launched initiatives
to operate its four independent units as a unified company. It began developing
common policies, methods, and processes to be used across Airbus. Documentation
was one of the first arenas to be addressed. A common platform and common
processes used by all of Airbus and its suppliers would deliver great efficiency,
meet customer requirements for standardized format and delivery for all Airbus
documentation, integrate and harmonize Airbus processes, establish a state-of-the-art
documentation platform, and improve the reliability and scalability of documentation
development and delivery.
Airbus also made it a goal to eliminate paper documentation. Printing, delivering,
and using paper, or paper equivalent (such as PDFs), was just no longer practical
or effective. Even though PDF files do not create the storage and delivery
problems of paper, they are not easily managed in large numbers. The problem
of managing paper is merely replaced by the problem of controlling file versions
and electronic storage. Updating a page in a manual requires creating an
entire new file. The old file must be located and removed; the new file must
be stored in the appropriate location. Any errors in this process could result
in improper repair or maintenance of aircraft. A more foolproof, flexible,
and scalable approach was critical.
Given the high degree of regulation, the actual documents can’t differentiate
Airbus’s product. But the process of creating and distributing the documentation
could differentiate the product in terms of how quickly updates are delivered
and whether the information is tailored for the fleet or customizable for the
individual airliner.
Superjumbo Challenges
The vast scale of the A380 documentation, its complexity, its rate of change,
its customization, its integration with customers’ repair information
systems, and regulatory requirements pose daunting challenges. These challenges
drive stringent requirements for the documentation system.
SCALE. The documentation for the A380 is well over a million pages and approaches
50 gigabytes. It addresses every single part and assembly and covers every
repair, damage assessment, test, and maintenance action that can be taken
on the A380. The 100 manuals, some of which are 50,000 pages or more, must
all be complete, tested, and certified before an aircraft can be shipped
to a customer. Scalability drives requirements in the following key areas:
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Distributed, Parallel Development. A380 development is distributed across four
countries and thousands of suppliers; so too is A380 expertise. Therefore,
the documentation system must support distributed development, where a thousand
authors and other contributors can work independently on their modules irrespective
of the schedules and accomplishments of others.
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Central Planning. At any time, hundreds of documentation projects might be
in process in order to achieve business goals relating to customer delivery,
new aircraft models, or revisions. Manuals have dependencies and interrelationships
that require coordination. And, given that customers want their documentation
well in advance of aircraft delivery, the entire Airbus organization needs
visibility into the documentation schedule.
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Independent Document Assembly. In order for the experts to work effectively
and efficiently on their modules, they need to be insulated from the problems
of how manuals are assembled for customers. The assembly of manuals must be
a separately managed activity.
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Automation. All aspects of the documentation development, publishing, and distribution
process must be as automated as possible. This means that workflows drive processes,
that forms contain the correct default data for each author and module, and
that assembly can be performed with very few steps.
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Layered Document and Information Architectures. All of the approaches that
support scalability—distributed development, automation, independent
assembly—create an architectural requirement. The scalability requirements
can only be achieved by deploying a layered architecture for the information
and documentation which allows decisions to be made at every level and every
stage of development. Manuals are comprised of independent chapters and modules;
data is separated from explanatory text; document layout is managed separately
from content; configuration of the manual is a separate step; the decision
on the applicability of a module to a specific variant is separated from the
configuration and assembly processes. With this layered approach, the most
informed people are making decisions, and assembly proceeds automatically.
Without a layered approach, assembly would require a massive effort to determine
the modules to include; and changes to data would require error-prone manual
efforts to seek out references to be changed. In short, the system would be
impracticable.
CUSTOMIZATION. Each customer purchases customized aircraft, requiring customized
documentation. The seating layout, entertainment, galleys, cargo bays, and
other elements are specific to each airline or air freight company, and sometimes
specific to each route a carrier flies. So, not only must the comprehensive
A380 documentation be created, it must be created for each customer, or even
each order or each individual airliner.
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Document Configuration System. Configuration and assembly of the set of manuals
for a customer is a very complex process that must be 100 percent accurate
and reproducible. An automated document configuration system, which allows
rules and facts to be developed over the life of the documentation project,
is the obvious solution. The configuration would assemble a set of manuals
from chapters, chapters from modules, and modules from finer-grained objects.
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Variants. A key requirement of the Airbus documentation system is the capability
to create content and associate it with variants of the basic documentation.
An example of a variant would be an assembly custom developed for a customer:
the documentation for this assembly would appear in this customer’s documentation,
but in no other.