Case: Processes and tools for Consilium Fire & Gas

Semcon uses its own processes and its proprietary information management system Kentucky in order to support Consilium Fire & Gas with technical information for its entire product range.

Challenge
Consilium Fire & Gas (Consilium), a global safety company within the fire and gas detection market, were in the process of extensively restructuring their product portfolio. Based on a common technical platform, Consilium delivers advanced safety systems for fire and gas detection to the Marine, Industrial and Automotive industries.

During the restructuring process it was identified that major changes were needed in the area of product information to support the changes in Consilium’s product portfolio, both current and future. Consilium realised that accomplishing such a restructuring project required external expertise and experience as well as new information strategies and production tools.

Solution
Semcon could offer Consilium this set of capabilities in combination with an impressive track record. Semcon was therefore chosen to be the strategic partner for supplying technical documentation services for Consilium. The responsibility includes all technical documentation including instruction manuals, spare part information and training material.

“This is a very exciting long term focused partnership with the trust of full responsibility covering several of our competence areas including project management. Within the setup there are great opportunities for efficient information production by realizing synergies across the different information products”, says Pär Ylander, Manager Industry & Telecom Göteborg.

The initial challenge for Semcon was to restructure Consilium’s documentation from desktop publishing to XML and has therefore tailored a new information structure and an XML based production process. To ensure efficient support in the production process, Semcon has implemented its proprietary information management system ‘Kentucky’.

Result
Joacim Karlsson, Manager Support Team R&D / Technical Information at Consilium, explains why Semcon was chosen as strategic partner.

“Consilium initiated the partnership with Semcon to meet future increased demands on efficient information management. XML based information provides us with the opportunity to quickly and with little effort make changes to the information in a large number of manuals. As we work on an international market the efficient translation support that the XML technology provides is very beneficial to us. We also benefit from Semcon’s size giving us the chance to quickly ramp up the information production when required. In addition, Semcon’s vast experience from information production and management ensures improved information and graphics quality.”

Kentucky is Semcon’s proprietary XML-based Information Management System. It can be used for production of a multitude of information products, and supports the production process with import functionality, version handling, review manager, task manager, translation management tool, publishing, etc. With Kentucky, Semcon can make sure we deliver top quality information products at low cost and with short lead time.