Patent ID: 8090462

Claim:
An apparatus for providing assistance and control in respect of maintenance operations that are based on electronic technical documentation prescribing a set of discrete electronic maintenance instructions (“EMIs”) which are connected to one another according to a predefined hierarchy and predefined order, the apparatus comprising: a navigation controller that is adapted to provide a context pointer or a group of context pointers referencing one or more respective EMIs, the context pointer or pointers indicating a subset of EMIs from among the set of discrete EMIs which constitute a current context within the set of discrete EMIs; a documentation management module adapted to select a group of permitted EMIs from among the subset of EMIs in accordance with metadata associated with respective EMIs within the subset of EMIs, the metadata providing an access control specification related to the respective EMIs; the navigation controller is further adapted to provide an active instruction pointer referencing a current active electronic maintenance instruction (“EMI”) selected from among the group of permitted EMIs; and an instruction controller generator that is responsive to said active instruction pointer for generating at least a respective active interactive instruction-controller (“active IIC”) that is responsive to a predefined user-interaction and/or to a predefined system state or event corresponding with the active IIC for switching a state of the active IIC to a predefined state that is related to the predefined user-interaction and/or to the predefined system state or event.