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Excosoft: Publishing Manuals

“without XEP this project would not have been possible”

Excosoft

XEP

FLIR Systems

Our company specialises in document management processes — structuring, visualisation, refinement and re-use. Our customers range from small businesses to large corporations and government agencies. Our solutions are based on standards such as XML, XSL and SVG and are both client and server based. We also maintain a proprietary hierarchical XML editor and our own visioning software.

A documentation solution Excosoft implemented for one of its customers — FLIR Systems, a global leader in the infrared camera market — was designed to speed up production and reduce translation costs. The sole member of Flir's documentation team was struggling with traditional publishing tools and desperately needed an automated solution. Not only did he need to deliver a considerable number of customer manuals, but he needed to do it in many different languages, including Chinese! However good an XML based document management system might be, if the final goal is published manuals the whole thing falls flat on its face without a competent rendering engine. Without XEP this project would not have been possible.

Client's Statistics

Here is an extract from a mail sent to Excosoft by Mats Broberg, FLIR's Technical Documentation Manager:

· Number of manuals: 300 (growing by approx. 20% per year)

· Number of languages: 17

· Documentation staff: 1 person

· Formatting speed: Just carried out a test with the A series manuals. XEP speeds along at a valiant 11,400 pages per hour.

· Page formattings per revision of all manuals for the two largest product families: approx. 30,000–40,000 pages.

· Page formattings of all manuals for the two largest product families: Approx 150,000–200,000 pages.

· Real number of page formattings per year of all manuals for all product families: Approx 250,000–300,000 pages.

· Manuals dispatched from FLIR each year: 7000–8000.

“We have used XEP for several years now, in widely varying production environments. I can warmly recommend the product, not only because of its excellence and competitive pricing but also because of the amazingly high level of support. Problems we have had with some esoteric issues have been fixed promptly, sometimes within a matter of hours!”

Richard Vincent Senior Consultant, Excosoft AB