CASE STUDY: Northstate Manufacturing

What began as white-board scribbles quickly developed into diagrams, welded metal, and electronic components. The new JT-2000 farm implement developed by Northstate Manufacturing blossomed out of the design department and seemingly matured overnight. Now preparing to participate in their second national tradeshow, machinists are in full-gear to meet pressing deadlines. The marketing department has already updated their website to mention the new product and prepared a full-color brochure that highlights the features. The production manager asks DataDesignIT to create detailed documentation in anticipation of future sales.

"There's no one here to really explain this stuff to you!" the production manager yells over the din of the machinery. "Those folks are working on a JT-2000 over there. If you have any questions, go ahead and ask around, but we're real busy. . ." With these words, DataDesignIT is given the task of developing a user manual, an installation guide, and a basic repair manual for the unit. Turnaround time: three weeks. After briefly interviewing managers and machinists, and reviewing the design specifications, the documentation process begins.

After a week of research (with a crescent wrench, phillips screwdriver, flashlight, grease-smeared diagrams . . . and a trusty laptop computer), DataDesgnIT compiles the findings to develop the requested documents. These include step-by-step instructions with clear explanations, and related diagrams from the engineering department. A few days later, DataDesignIT emails the final documents to the Marketing Manager and are circulated among Northstate's departments. After a series of editorial revisions, they are returned to DataDesignIT for the final draft. This final draft is emailed to the marketing manager a day ahead of schedule and is sent off for printing for the upcoming tradeshow.

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