Brief Outline of IETM

IETM or Interactive Electronic Technical Manual

as the name indicates, it is a Manual that is interactive and in the form of electronic/digital.

The PDF file is also electronic/digital, will that be called IETM?

Yes, undoubtedly PDF is also IETM. It’s Level 2 IETM.

I need to give an example so that u can understand better about Levels. Every one of us must have played digital games. In that, we need to cross various levels. The first level would be simple, the second a little difficult, 3rd level more challenging and 4th Level tough.

The question is, why is this documentation required?

Along with phones or vehicles or any household gadgets, we get a user manual because, in case we have any trouble while using, we can refer to the manual and resolve the issue, without connecting to OEM or service centers as might not be available 24 X7.

Hence, these documents should be in simple language easy to navigate, and easy to reach any point in a few clicks.

IETM JSG 0852 | Code and Pixels

The bigger the system/device the more pages are required and more variety of manuals are required. i.e. User manual, Operator manual, Maintainer manual, Spare list, and so on.

If some fault has occurred in the system, then the operator may need to refer to more than one manual and it is very difficult to refer to multiple hardcopies. Even it is not easy to refer to multiple PDFs and refer to the issue as there is no linkage between all PDFs.

The purpose of the Manual is to guide the operator. If the manual is more dynamic it will be easy for the operator to refer and resolve the issue.
Level 4 and to some extent, Level 3 will be very handy and very fast. All the documents are converted to a database, hence searching and inter-document referring will become easier.

I.e. a user can search for a problem and easily reach that particular page in seconds and also can see all the related topics to that topic which is being displayed.