In the interview with Roland Schmeling, Managing Director of Schmeling + Consultants GmbH
Technical documentation and service instructions for machinery and vehicles, as well as user manuals, have existed for as long as technical machines and systems have been around. SCHMELING + CONSULTANTS is a consulting firm that has been supporting customers in various industries such as mechanical engineering, medical technology, automotive, construction products, components, energy, electrical industry, software, and administrations in technical communication for many years.
The challenge for many companies lies in efficiently and compliantly creating, managing, publishing, and distributing large volumes of technical information that meet high safety and quality requirements. This includes, for example, service instructions for machinery or vehicles, user manuals and reprocessing instructions for medical devices, online help or embedded help for software, and assembly videos for construction products. With digital transformation, technical documentation is also changing significantly, becoming more digital, multimedia-based, and user-centered. However, legal frameworks and rigid habits are hindering these changes.
Today, we speak with Roland Schmeling, Managing Director of Schmeling + Consultants GmbH, about dealing with legal conditions, customer and consumer expectations, market supervision, and rigid contractual frameworks, and take a look at the future of technical documentation in digital transformation.
DIGITAL FUTUREmag: Anyone who has ever sold a more or less complex system or machine knows that part of the revenue depends on good and safe technical documentation provided to the customer. Why, then, is documentation still such an unloved stepchild for many companies?
Roland Schmeling: Is it really? Based on my experience, many companies have not yet recognized the potential of this topic and often don’t know how to organize it. Should it be part of product development, marketing, service, or product management? There’s a lot of uncertainty. Moreover, terms like “necessary evil” and outdated statements such as “at best, only a lawyer will read it” shape the perception. Documentation has an image problem.
What is true is that technical documentation fulfills product safety, product liability, and contractual functions. This legal compliance is important and places high quality demands on the information, but legal compliance is not its only function. Modern documentation is multimedia-based, mobile, digital, user-oriented, useful, value-adding, sales-promoting, and can even be interesting.
Surveys from the USA and the Netherlands as well as personal experiences in B2B show that technical documentation and instructions are truly needed and used. Moreover, instructions are becoming increasingly accessible through digital transformation, whether as PDF downloads or HTML, and when provided online, they are also searchable by search engines; accordingly, instructions have a sales aspect. Even though I cannot currently support this with publicly available figures: The question of a managing director “Do we sell more products with good instructions?” I would therefore answer today with “Yes”. By the way, the Regional Court of Hanover recently ruled in a case that a pre-available instruction is a performance promise, which led to a contract termination because the product did not fully comply with the published instruction. So, courts also see instructions as having this sales function.
Personally, if I may say so, as a career changer – I originally studied physics and philosophy – I specifically entered this area, which I find very exciting. What I find exciting is its interdisciplinarity: engineering sciences, text and image, media such as video and AR, IT and digitalization, but also pedagogy, technical law, standardization and product compliance, UX and usability, marketing and management all come together here. I experience this in the many engineers who flock to our training and further education programs, showing that its popularity is growing.
By the way, we are not talking about technical documentation, but about technical communication, because that is what it is really about. We will certainly talk more about the diverse possibilities of technical communication.
DIGITAL FUTUREmag: Exactly. Many new technologies have been introduced in recent years that can also be used well in technical documentation. In your opinion, what are the most important ones?
Roland Schmeling: We must fundamentally distinguish between the technologies in information development, information provision, and information use. In information development, technologies include Component Content Management Systems, CCMS, or editorial systems, Translation Management Systems for reusing already translated texts, terminology management systems, as well as so-called authoring assistance and computational linguistic tools that improve text quality and consistency while reducing translation costs. In the visual realm, production chains are becoming more seamless, from 3D models in design to illustrations and animations. Added to this is the simplified creation of video and AR productions.
In information provision, exchange formats such as DITA, iiRDS, or VDI 2770 for plant engineering and so-called Content Delivery Systems are key. These systems no longer provide information as documents but as usage-specific modules, potentially multimedia and—this is the exciting part—from various interconnected sources: from the editorial system, from the ERP, from the PDM. If done correctly, this can lead to enormous customer benefits and help ensure that customers no longer have to seek out information but instead receive it tailored to their specific situations. In other words, shifting from pull to push.
As for information use, mobile technologies have become increasingly important. I recently had to readjust a very complex hinge in my new kitchen. There was a QR code that took me in seconds to the adjustment instructions for that specific hinge, so I didn’t need to call a technician. Great. The only downside: the instructions were still a static PDF, making them less than optimal to read on a large smartphone display.
Currently, at least as exciting as the question of technologies is the issue of roles and tasks—i.e., the processes that are changing or need to change significantly. Silo thinking has led to customer communication being handled inconsistently by various departments. This inevitably results in contradictions and thus significant latent risks.
DIGITAL FUTUREmag: Customer requirements for documentation are high and come with many legal obligations. Naturally, this also involves liability risks. How can producers of technical documentation best prepare or protect themselves to meet these requirements?
Roland Schmeling: “Preparing” is certainly the more appropriate word than “securing.” I could now launch into a multi-hour lecture on this, and I really should, because we are dealing with an enormously complex and constantly changing situation in product safety law, product liability law, but also in contract law and even data protection law.
If we limit the question to digital transformation, it is: How can manufacturers reduce the masses of printed information while remaining legally compliant and managing risks, in favor of digital, searchable, user-friendly formats.
In our consulting, it is primarily these components that help our customers: legal and standards research, requirements management, end-to-end information processes, for example from risk assessment to appropriate safety and warning notices and coordinated warning signs or warning messages on the product’s control system, but also a lot of standardization work and knowledge building in training sessions, workshops, and coaching.
One must understand that the question of legal compliance and the quality of information cannot be separated. If an accident occurs because a user misunderstood something in the instructions—because the torque value was outdated, the warning notice was in the wrong place, or the training material stated something different than the operating instructions—this is easy to see. And these are cases we deal with on a daily basis.
DIGITAL FUTUREmag: In your opinion, what are the most important success factors for creating technical documentation?
Roland Schmeling: I’ll name three: quality, quality, and quality. Of course, this is rhetorical, because the question arises: what is the right quality, and how can we achieve it permanently and efficiently? Martin Eppler, who previously taught in St. Gallen, suggests for information quality as a definition that it is the satisfaction of stakeholders with an information and its integration into a medium. I like this definition because, as stakeholders, it includes not only users but also manufacturers, authors, and legal experts, and it also considers the medium. The goal is to develop requirement-appropriate information products as part of technical products using efficient processes that lead to customer satisfaction.
With digitally provided instructions, a significant sales-promoting aspect is increasingly coming into play, because customers also use the detailed information offerings of instructions before making a purchase decision. This is how our customers gain competitive advantages through instructions in HTML format or instructional videos in the local language.
DIGITAL FUTUREmag: You mentioned this yourself. How important has the topic of multimedia and user experience (UX) become in recent years?
Roland Schmeling: It is becoming increasingly important because customers expect manufacturers to serve these information channels. Two observations: A manufacturer from the sanitary technology sector recently reported that participants in product training sessions are increasingly asking for videos showing the assembly of sanitary products. A large trading house is equipping its offices with several thousand new office lights and is contractually requiring instructional videos for installation.
And one more word on UX. In the past, the world was clear: a printed manual had to be included with the product. But with digital transformation, we now need to address the question of how to configure information landscapes going forward. This only works with a thorough examination of target groups and their usage context, for example through user journeys. Right down to usability tests that we use to verify the benefits and effectiveness of these interlinked information landscapes. The benefits of UX are recognized not only by manufacturers of large and complex high-tech systems, but also by manufacturers of washbasins, fans, or chainsaws.
DIGITAL FUTUREmag: For large systems and machinery, technical documentation can quickly fill an entire filing cabinet. This documentation quickly becomes outdated, and no one wants to read it. Where is the journey heading in your field?
Roland Schmeling: Very exciting. As a member of several national and international standards committees, we are currently addressing this issue more intensively. During Germany’s exit from nuclear energy, we saw the difficulties power plants faced because their documentation did not match the current state. Yet this is a prerequisite for proper decommissioning. Not to mention the risks that arise when, for example, a maintenance technician replaces a seal and does not realize that previous changes to a pump type mean the previous seals no longer fit precisely. In plant engineering, we are unfortunately miles away from the digital twin. But the journey will inevitably head in this direction because we have no other choice.
DIGITAL FUTUREmag: Your company is also well-positioned in the areas of training, education, coaching, and the development of such concepts. What trends can you identify here?
Roland Schmeling: One thing is certain: we have a lot to learn in technical communication because we need to make many changes. In the 1990s, technical communication focused heavily on itself; in the 2000s, it focused on processes. Now, we need to consider significant shifts in responsibilities and roles. This affects learning: we’re moving away from textbook knowledge toward user-centered learning, where individual experience plays a bigger role.
Concretely, this means that while we still need to provide a classic knowledge base in training, we also need to create opportunities for interdisciplinary collaboration on concrete projects—including methods from agile contexts like Design Thinking. It’s a future I’m very much looking forward to, and one we’ll actively help shape.
DIGITAL FUTUREmag: Thank you very much for this exciting interview.