An interactive electronic technical manual for an advanced aerospace assembly machine

This paper describes the design and evaluation of a pilot information system to ease the burden of document configuration management for an aerospace manufacturer. The documents that comprised the content of the system are used to control manual activities associated with a large automated machine tool, such as machine setup, test piece checking and maintenance. The information content was in the form of web pages and PDF documents, both of which were presented to users via an Internet kiosk, in order to maximise usability and system security. The system was designed using a formal task analysis and evaluated using a method based on task-technology-fit theory and the technology acceptance model. It was shown that users would accept such a system and use it in preference to other sources of similar information. The greatest financial benefit of such systems is likely to be due to a reduced mean time to repair the machine.