John Zhou, principal consultant: I know I am dating myself by using the infamous VCR machine analogy here. VCR was supposed to be an invention that allows us to record television shows to watch later so that we don’t have to be tethered to the tube. The miserable fact is that the VCR is so difficult to use, most users, including myself, gave up on using it after a few attempts. If you hold an image of a VCR remote and iPod side by side, you will understand why one sits in the corner collecting dust and the other is widely popular.
The same comparison can be used between traditional electronic O&M Manuals and ActiveManuals. Traditional electronic manuals are usually authored and compiled by a professional service team and delivered as a static package on a storage media such as DVD ROM or external hard drive. Those manuals are in the format of PDF file with embedded links to other pages, or HTML format with links to different pages and files. Because they are usually not organized and created by the final users of the manuals, final users find it difficult to locate the information they need. And to make thing even worse, it is rather difficult to update those manuals with changes take place in a facility.
To the contrary, the ActiveManuals solution is based on database and web site technology and enables end users to create, organize and maintain manuals. Most importantly, it also provides access control, version history, graphic navigation, and full-text search capabilities that traditional electronic O&M manuals cannot provide. Since its launch, ActiveManuals has been used by scores of MWH customers and gained its popularity due to its easiness of use.
Tacoma Water in Washington uses ActiveManuals on a SharePoint platform to build the electronic O&M manuals for their new filtration plant at Green River. The entire O&M manuals was built by a Tacoma Water employee with little training on ActiveManuals over the construction stage of the facility. In less than one year, they built a dynamic site with 500 pages, 2000 associated documents and numerous cross links. Their site front page alone has 82 versions. It will be a daunting task if this is created by external parties other than the manual end users.
If you want to find out more about ActiveManuals, you can visit http://www.mwhglobal.blog/services/management-consulting/activemanuals/ or watch a video.
