The role of the Royal Navy in the United Kingdom's foreign and security policy, means that the size and shape of the fleet will continue to evolve. A vast repository of logistic knowledge and know-how has been amassed over the last forty years in books and technical manuals that detail every aspect of all ships in the Fleet, aircraft and other weapons platforms, general equipment, procedures, process models, and a vast array of other technical data. But now the dawn of the electronic documentation era has created a revolution in the storage and retrieval of data. The electronic documentation system is part of a revolution that embraces the Internet. Statutory bodies need recorded evidence of compliance to quality standards and regulations.
Customers demand sales literature, product information and technical support.
Engineers require technical data and the facility to manage their development data. Paul Clark tells the story of the work he and his colleagues have carried out on the data conversion team for the RN project. The conversion of hardcopy information in technical manuals to an electronic format is technically feasible but the cost of data conversion to ensure the appropriate level of accuracy is high. Much of the information is safety critical, and there are critical maintenance issues involved. If the required conversion quality in terms of accuracy is not achieved then essentially the end user will have lost something of a known good standard albeit presented in a better way.