The development of a hypermedia maintenance manual for an advanced manufacturing company

This paper addresses the development of a hypermedia maintenance manual (HMM) for a manufacturer of automotive equipment. The primary goal was to reduce the non-productive time of the winding machines by supporting the activities of the maintenance personnel in performing preventive and corrective maintenance. In addition, it was hoped that a HMM could decrease the time required to train inexperienced technicians. Additional considerations were given to keeping as low as possible the production, maintenance, updating and dissemination costs of the HMM, and to its ease of use. The paper describes the development environment and stages of creating a HMM. The views of the maintenance personnel and production managers expressed during the evaluation of the system are discussed and used to identify possible improvements and future research.