FR2996021A1 - METHOD FOR PRODUCING CUSTOMIZED PRODUCT DOCUMENTATION - Google Patents

Abstract

A method for generating customized documentation for configuring a user's product from a global product documentation describing variants includes the steps of: retrieving from the global documentation of unit validities indicating the attributes of the product product and / or the specificities of its context of use that determine the specialized parts of the overall documentation that apply to different product configurations; selecting, among the extracted unit validities, those that correspond to characteristics of the user's product configuration; and produce the customized documentation by including the specialized parts of the overall documentation that correspond to the selected unit validities as well as eventually general parts of the overall documentation that apply to all configurations. A syntactical analysis of the information indicating the validity of the different parts of the global documentation makes it possible to identify the general pages and the unit values.

Description

The invention relates to the field of the production of the documentation of a product and more particularly the automatic production of a customized documentation of a product from a product. "global" documentation. STATE OF THE ART Industry in general, and aeronautics in particular, produces considerable volumes of documents in order to specify the conditions of use and maintenance of its products and to train its customers. This documentation is regularly updated to take into account the obsolescence, the improvements, the adaptations, the commercial options, the evolutions, the regulatory context, the uses of the product or the policies of exploitation and of after-sales service ("les attributes and contexts of product use "below). The duration of production and use of an industrial product can reach several tens of years during which hundreds of updates will have to be edited, published, distributed and then integrated by the customer according to his needs in the documentation which was delivered to him upon receipt of the product. In general, the manufacturer (or manufacturer) has documentation that can be described as "comprehensive" - because it describes the product taking into account possible variations in the attributes of the product and / or variations in the product. context of use of it - while the operator (customer, user) wishes to have a product documentation that is specific to the configuration of the product that it operates, that is to say specific attributes (properties, structural and / or functional characteristics) and / or contexts of use of the product. Generally the documentation of a product consists of several documents (user's guide, maintenance manual, etc.) grouped in a document folder, each document and / or the document folder, presenting a hierarchical structure (for example , chapters, sections, pages, etc.). Typically, the document folder constituting the global documentation, produced by the manufacturer, contains parts, in particular groups of pages, even groups of paragraphs, which are not applicable to all the operators because they do not have all of them have the same attributes and operate in different contexts of use. In order to produce appropriate client documentation, you must identify and delete unnecessary page / paragraph groups, and then reorder the remaining page / paragraph groups. This rearrangement of the remaining groups of pages / paragraphs is optional; it consists of rearranging the groups of pages / paragraphs of one of the documents into another document in order to present the reader with a ready-to-use and easily usable collection of documents. In highly regulated industrial domains (aeronautics, nuclear, space, transport, etc.), the content of "global" documents produced by manufacturers is declared to comply with the outcome of an approval process, or even a certification process, many validation activities, usually recorded in a supporting file, aim at validating the conformity of these documents with a set of requirements and good practices defined by the regulatory constraints and, if necessary, additional specifications. The responsibility of the manufacturer is engaged if the contents of the documentation that it elaborates turns out to be erroneous or insufficient. The customer can not change the content of the documents without engaging his own responsibility, which requires him to comply with the regulatory constraints. The content of a page approved by the manufacturer must not be modified by the client; it can be replaced by a page where the operator assumes responsibility. Changes to the certified documentation must be mapped. Even today, in the aeronautical industry, or in other highly regulated industrial fields, documentation is used in a traditional, paper-based way. It is therefore duplicated and stored in folders available to customers (operators, maintenance specialists and various stakeholders in the life cycle). It is common that hundreds of copies of the same documentation, with specific adaptations, are dispatched throughout the world. The adaptation of the global documentation to the needs of the different customers requires a long and expensive treatment. In parallel, in order to limit the costs of broadcasting and reproduction, manufacturers have organized themselves to disseminate documentary updates incrementally. All the documentation is not systematically rebroadcast, only the impacted pages, or supplements, or new appendices are rebroadcast. Classically mentions are -3 written in the headers or footers to clarify the applicability, pages broadcast, depending on the specificities of each product (in terms of its attributes and / or its contexts use). FIG. 1 schematically represents a series of pages forming part of a documentary update and shows a conventional way of presenting the statements of applicability, called "validities" ("effectivity" in English). It should be noted that validities can be entered not only on the update pages but also on the pages of the initial documentation. The update of each document workbook is performed by the operator, manually. During this operation, the operator selects the pages that correspond to all the attributes of the product that he has and / or to his contexts of use. During the update, the client therefore sorted and included in its workbook folders only part of the information disseminated globally by the manufacturer, thus constituting customized documentation. At the end of this sort, he introduces the new pages in each workbook. During this operation, four methods are generally used: (i) the addition of the new pages at the end of the binder (appendices or supplements), (ii) the replacement of the pages become obsolete by new pages up to date, (iii) inserting new pages inside the binder, (iv) deleting pages that have become obsolete. This conventional process is obviously expensive in terms of postal charges, printing and labor for both the customer and the manufacturer / manufacturer; he is not reactive either. It is not uncommon for several weeks to be necessary for its fulfillment. Finally, it involves (i) a risk of error due to the many interactions required and (ii) a risk of cumulation of errors due to its incremental nature. More and more companies want to use the documentation electronically, using - as the case may be - different electronic document formats such as for example: PDF, HTML or XML. The fact that the documentation becomes electronic positively impacts the dissemination process in the sense that postal costs, reproduction costs, and the risk of errors are greatly reduced. It is also the opportunity to disseminate complete revisions rather than incremental revisions, which simplifies and secures the documentary process of manufacturers.

On the other hand, if the manufacturer merely publishes complete revisions, he imposes on himself or his customers the task of producing, from the "global" documentation, a "customer" product the configuration of the product for which this documentation will be used. Otherwise, the reader would be obliged to check the applicability statements in the headers or footers of the "global" documentation before using the information. One known approach for producing customized documents is to develop a template of the desired document, with blanks in various places where variable information should be inserted. The information to be included in the template is obtained on a case-by-case basis, including the questioning of the person who will use the customized document, and the latter then consists of the template supplemented by the information that applies. in this case.

This known approach is of limited application because the documentation of a product rarely lends itself to a homogeneous presentation applicable for all possible variations of the product configuration whether in terms of the attributes of the product (architecture, options, etc.) or in terms of its context of use. Moreover, the automation of the production process of the customized documentation is only modest according to this approach since the customer must be involved in it in an important way. SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION The object of the invention is to automate the production of customized documentation based on the "global" documentation of a product. Here the term "automate" is used to indicate that the process is mainly done by technical means, with a low level of user interaction, as opposed to a manual process for which the majority of the process steps are accomplished by a human. The invention provides an automated production method, from a global documentation of a product describing different configurations of the product in terms of attributes and / or in terms of the specificities of the context of its use, a documentation product specific to a subset of said product configurations, some portions of the overall documentation not being applicable to certain product configurations, characterized in that the method comprises the steps of: in a preparatory phase: identifying, in the global documentation, information indicating the validity of the different parts of the overall documentation with regard to the attributes of the product and / or with regard to the specificities of the context of use of the product, the validity information determining the applicability of the parts of the product; global documentation to product configurations, extract, validity information identified during the identification step, unit validities corresponding to the attributes of the product and / or to the specificities of the context of use of the product which, in logical combination, determine the applicability of the specialized parts of the global documentation to the configurations of the product, and generate a list of the unit validities extracted in the previous step and links between the different specialized parts of the global documentation and the unit validities, or the corresponding combinations of unit values; and in an exploitation phase: identifying those unit validities of said list which correspond to the attributes of said subset of the product configurations and / or to the specificities of the context of use of said subset of the product configurations, calculating the specialized parts of the global documentation corresponding to the combination of the unit validities identified during the identification step; and produce the customized documentation by omitting from the global documentation the specialized parts that were not retained during the calculation step. According to the method of the invention a customized product documentation can be produced in an automated manner, with less intervention of the user. The global documentation processed may consist of complete documentation or, in the case of incremental revision, an update. When the overall documentation consists of an update, the "customized documentation" produced by the process outlined above consists of the parts of the update that apply to the operator's product and it is advantageous to add a step of integrating these parts of the update into the documentation already held by the user. When the global documentation has general parts that are applicable to all the configurations of the product, advantageously the step of producing the customized documentation integrates the general parts to the specialized parts of the overall documentation selected during the calculation step. More precisely, the customized documentation is obtained from the global documentation by deleting the specialized parts not retained during the calculation step. Preferably, the identification of the unit validities that correspond to the configuration (configurations) of the user's product consists in the selection by the user in a list of the unit validities defined during the unitary validity extraction step. . The number of choices presented to the user is significantly reduced when the automated method of producing product documentation includes the step of sorting the unit validities by categories, and the category presentation step of the unit validities at the same time. 'user. The method may include the step of storing information designating a set of unit validities, said set of unit validities corresponding to a combination of attributes and / or product context specificities of the product, and the step of selection can offer the user the possibility of reloading previously saved unit values, thus saving time.

The method can comprise the steps of presenting to a user the list of specialized parts of the global documentation that the system proposes to delete to constitute the customized documentation of the product, and to adjust, according to commands received from the user, this list of specialized parts to be removed from the overall documentation to obtain customized product documentation. In this way the user can avoid deficiencies (duplicates and others) in the customized documentation that would have been caused by errors or inaccuracies in the overall documentation. Often there are "project" rules on the permissible structure of final documentation: rules that, for example, prohibit the presence of two pages / paragraphs dealing with the same topic. For the same purpose of avoiding deficiencies in the customized documentation, it is advantageous to check according to "project" rules the list of the parts of the overall documentation selected or not selected to be part of the customized documentation of the product, and indicate to the user any inconsistencies, especially in case of errors in the source data. According to some embodiments of the invention it is possible to trace the differences between the overall documentation of the product and the customized documentation of the product. Similarly, the list of parts of the global documentation to be deleted can be stored for traceability purposes to constitute the customized documentation of the product. These additional steps make it possible to justify the correct progress of the production process of the customized documentation, especially when the global documentation has undergone an approval process by a regulatory body.

The method of the invention can be implemented in different ways, for example the method can be implemented by an autonomous client station when the latter receives the global documentation of the product after it has been approved and distributed. The invention also provides a computer program characterized in that it comprises program code instructions for executing the steps of the method according to the method mentioned above when this program is executed by a processor. PRESENTATION OF THE FIGURES The invention will be better understood on reading the following description of exemplary embodiments, with reference to the appended drawings in which: FIG. 1 represents pages of an overall documentation on which validity information appears; Fig. 2 is a flow chart showing the steps of a method for producing customized documentation according to an embodiment of the invention; FIG. 3 schematically represents functional elements of an assembly file creation device capable of implementing step S2 of FIG. 2; Fig. 4 is a flow chart showing the steps of a method of creating an assembly file using the device of Fig. 3; FIG. 5 schematically represents functional elements of a custom documentation production device adapted to implement the steps S3 to S8 of FIG. 2; and FIG. 6 (including FIGS. 6A-6H) shows in simplified form screens that are displayed to a client during the production of customized documentation according to the method of FIG. 2. DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE EMBODIMENTS INVENTION In this document, unless the context requires a different interpretation: - the term "manufacturer" means any entity (eg a manufacturer, a manufacturer, a supplier of a product or a third party acting on behalf of the product manufacturer), which is responsible for developing an overall documentation describing variations applicable to the product (its attributes and / or its context of use). - the term "customer" means any entity (for example, an acquirer, a product user, an operator, a maintenance specialist, etc.) who wishes to have documentation specific to its product instance and / or its contexts of use of the product. - the term "applicability" or "applicable to" defines the product configuration - in terms of attributes and / or context of use of the product - for which the document content of the page or group of pages is valid. - the term "attribute" of the product refers to the characteristics of an instance of the product as such such as, for example, the structural and functional characteristics of that product instance, the options applicable to that product instance, etc. Normally, all possible instances of the product are documented by the "global" documentation. The variability of the product is due to adaptations requested by the customer or proposed to customers (for example commercial options), changes in the definition over time (obsolescence, upgrades), changes in manufacturing processes, changes in suppliers or changes in the support policy. - the term "use context" of the product refers to the specific characteristics of use of this product, for example: the country in which it is registered or registered, the particular requirements of the certification authority of that country, the environment in which the product is used (climatic and environmental conditions, presence of corrosive agents ...), as well as the specificities of the missions that the product has to perform (transport of passengers, goods, etc.). - the term "product configuration" is used to refer to the combination of product instance characteristics held by the customer (whether in terms of product attributes and / or in terms of the context of use of the product). product). the term "validity" ("effectivity") defines the sentence or group of sentences that expresses the reader the applicability of the group of pages. These sentences can be positioned at the various levels of the documentary tree (manual, chapter, section, page), in the document liminal (effective lists of pages for example), or sometimes in interpretable files that accompany the electronic documentation. "Constructor". In the case where several validities are simultaneously present at several levels of the document tree, the applicability of the page group is constituted by logical combination of the different validities. In the case where this "validity" is only present at one level of the document tree, the validity corresponds to the applicability. In the case where a group of pages does not have validity, it must be considered that this group of pages is applicable in all the cases (notion of "All", that is to say "Garlic" in English). In general, the validities express the applicability of the page group in terms of sentences, codes or others that indicate the classes of products that are concerned or not concerned by this group of pages. For example, an "FAA" validity could refer to the class of aircraft whose certification authority is the Federal Aviation Authority, a "MOD 3468" validity could designate the class 25 of aircraft that incorporate the modification described by the sheet called MOD 3468 , a validity "EXCEPT MOD 3468" could indicate that only the class of planes incorporating modification 3468 is not concerned by this group of pages. A validity may be "combined" or "compounded", that is, expressing the applicability of the page group by specifying a logical combination of classes, for example a combined validity "FAA and MOD 3468" indicates the intersection of the classes designated by the terms "FAA" and "MOD 3468", or for example a combined validity "Series Z140 to Z160" which designates all aircraft whose serial numbers, which are unitary validities, are between Z140 and Z160. The term "unit validity" refers to a simple validity that defines a class, without reference to other classes: for example, "FAA" validity at all, or, for example, "Z133" validity. simply. The combined validity can be analyzed in order to identify the unit validities that form part of it. the term "group of pages" or "parts of the global documentation" means a list of consecutive pages, or a list of other consecutive parts of the global documentation (paragraphs or others), which share the same applicability. The "group of pages" may correspond - depending on the circumstances - to a complete manual, to one of its annexes or supplements, to a documentary subset of the document such as a chapter or section, to a series of pages or to an isolated page, a series of paragraphs, or an isolated paragraph. An embodiment of the process for producing custodial product documentation according to the invention will now be described with reference to Figures 2 to 6.

This embodiment of the invention will be exposed in the context of: - a "global" documentation that describes instances of the product having different combinations of attributes as well as different specificities related to different contexts of use of this ci, and - a method that allows to customize the global documentation in relation not only to the attributes of its product instance but also in relation to the specificities of the context of use of it. Those skilled in the art will appreciate that this method can be adapted in the event that this global documentation is customized only with respect to the attributes of the instance of the product held by the operator (or only with respect to the specificities the context of use of his product). Those skilled in the art will also appreciate that this method can be adapted in the case where the "global" documentation describes variations of the product solely in terms of the attributes thereof without dealing with different contexts of use, the global documentation being then customized only with respect to the attributes of the product. Similarly, those skilled in the art will understand that this method can be adapted in the case where the "global" documentation describes variations of the product solely in terms of the context of use thereof without dealing with the different attributes of the product, the global documentation is then customized only with respect to the context of use of the product.

Fig. 2 is a diagram for illustrating a method for producing customized documentation according to a first embodiment of the invention. The left-hand part of FIG. 2 shows the main steps S 1 to S 8 of the method whereas the right-hand part of FIG. 2 indicates the elements that became available at the end of the different steps of the process. At the very beginning of the process (step Si) it is necessary to obtain the global documentation of the product D1 from which the customized documentation of the product will be produced. According to the current example, the global documentation of the product D1 distributed by the manufacturer contains all the information necessary for the operators of his product in all its forms and in all contexts of use, and consists of manuals, supplements and annexes. Some page groups are not applicable to certain instances of the product or certain contexts of use, and therefore the term "specialized page groups" can be used to refer to such groups of pages. Validity information informs the reader of the applicability of specialized page groups. Of course the global documentation may also include groups of pages that are applicable to all products and contexts of use and, therefore, the term "general page groups" can be used to designate such groups. of pages. It is not essential to provide validity information to general page groups, but if desired, an expression that expresses the notion of "all" can be used. The next step S2 of the method consists of analyzing the overall documentation of the product in order to create a D2 assembly file including information as to the validities that are defined in relation to the different groups of pages of the global documentation. In this embodiment, the assembly file D2 includes information that indicates the characteristics of the product (attributes and specificities of the context of use) that are determinative of the groups of pages of the global documentation that apply to a particular configuration of the application. product. Preferably these determining characteristics, or "unitary validity", are sorted by categories (see below). A method for generating the assembly file will be described below in relation to Figures 3 and 4. For now it should be mentioned that the assembly file D2 includes a list of couples "group of pages-validity" as well as a list of unit validities. The precise way of obtaining the global documentation D1, and the moment when the assembly file D2 is produced, depend on the peculiarities of the implementation of the method and, in particular, the question of whether the manufacturer / manufacturer or the customer is responsible for producing the customized documentation and the way in which the system designer decides to share the tasks between the various stakeholders. It should be noted that the invention is not particularly limited in relation to the manner of obtaining the global documentation in the step Si or in relation to the speaker who is responsible for producing the assembly file.

Of course, if the client is responsible for producing the D2 assembly file, he must have access to the global documentation, for example remote access via a communications network (internet, WAN, LAN, etc.) or direct access. by delivery of a physical copy of this documentation (whether on paper or in electronic form on a medium).

The current description of the first embodiment of the invention provides that the manufacturer is responsible for both the creation of the global documentation D1 and the production of the assembly file D2, in order to put these elements D1, D2 to the available to its customers, each customer then taking care of the production of the customized documentation of its own. It can be considered that the steps S1 and S2 consist of a preparatory phase, which is indicated in FIG. 2 by the dotted box. The steps S3 to S8 of FIG. 2 are carried out on the client side, in particular interactively by means of a computer application that makes it possible to access the global documentation as well as the assembly file (that these files are stored on a file). local support at the customer's station accessible via a computer network and / or a communication network). Step S3 of the method of FIG. 2 thus consists in obtaining from the customer an indication on which "determining characteristics" (or "unitary validity") are relevant with respect to his product. A simple way to obtain this indication is to display a list of unit values and to encourage the operator to select from this list the characteristics that apply to his product. This approach will be described in more detail in relation with FIG. 6. However, it should be noted that the invention is not limited in relation to this way of obtaining the identification of the unit validities which correspond to the actual configuration of the device. customer product. For example, in an appropriate case the identification of the unit validities that apply to the product could be done by the automatic interrogation of the product. Note that according to the method of the invention the customer does not choose the pages he wants to incorporate in its customized documentation; the client does not identify either the set of attributes of its product instance or the set of specificities of the context of use of its product. On the contrary, the customer is led to identify which of certain characteristics of the product / its context of use correspond to the actual configuration of its product, these "certain characteristics" not being necessarily all the possible characteristics but corresponding in particular to the characteristics variables that affect the applicability of page groups. This considerably reduces the number of decisions that the client must make and the decisions that remain are expressed in clear language. When the client has identified those unit validities that correspond to the configuration of his product, it may be advantageous to store in a file, a database, memory or other medium, the list of selected unit validities D3 (step S4 ). Such a stored list defines the key characteristics of the customer's product configuration from the point of view of determining the applicability of the pages of the global documentation. Later, for example when issuing a new version of the global documentation, we can use this list stored to allow the production of a customized version of this new global documentation without asking the customer again to perform the selection of step S3. Of course, we can do without step S4 if we do not wish to have this possibility.

According to the method of the invention, the list of unit validities selected by the client is used to calculate which groups of specialized pages must be deleted to constitute the customized documentation for this client (step S5). This calculation again involves data from the assembly file D2, in particular the list of "page-validity group" pairs relating to the groups of specialized pages. The resulting list is a suggested list of pages to delete D5. It may be advantageous to offer the customer the ability to control and possibly modify the proposed list of pages to delete D5. Such a possible adjustment of the pages to be deleted (step S6 of FIG. 2) makes it possible to remedy possible problems related to inconsistencies or errors in the overall documentation. Depending on the case, the list of groups of pages to be deleted in order to constitute the personalized documentation therefore consists of either the list D5 proposed at the end of step S5 or the adjusted list D6 resulting from step S6. Once the final list of page groups to delete D5 / D6 stopped it may be advantageous to archive this list (step S7) in a file, a database, a memory or on an appropriate support. Such a stored list makes it possible to trace the differences between the global documentation (manufacturer) and the customized documentation (customer) in order, for example, to prove that the customer documentation was correctly constituted in view of the relevant regulatory constraints. Of course, this step S7 archiving is optional and not an essential step of the invention. The final list of groups of pages to be deleted is then used to enable the production of the customized documentation (step S8 of FIG. 2), this customized documentation omitting the groups of specialized pages that have not been retained. In step S8, typically, the customized documentation is named, archived and - if appropriate - broadcast. It can be used as is. Typically the customized documentation is provided to the client in association with consulting software capable of performing functions of consultation, research, etc. on the customized documentation.

Step S8 may include the production of stand-alone customized documentation - for example a printed version, a version stored on hard disk or other suitable medium, an electronic version - which will be made available to the customer either at his premises or via access via a computer network and / or a communication network.

However, it is not mandatory to build an independent version of the customized documentation: step S8 of the method can produce a virtual version of the customized documentation, this virtual version consisting of the list of pages to be deleted. An associated application allows the customer to view the relevant pages of the overall documentation by means of his computer (tablet, phone, etc.). If desired, step S8 may optionally include the creation of customized document elements comprising pages that are not identical to pages of the overall documentation: such as, for example, cover pages, tables of contents, dictionaries, cross references each in a manner relevant to the customer in view of the configuration of his product. If desired, step S8 may include an additional method of collating the pages of a document forming part of the overall documentation into another document. An example of possible implementation of steps S3 to S8 of Figure 2 will be described below in relation to Figures 5 and 6. The data possibly archived during the implementation of the method of Figure 2 (global documentation , list of groups of pages-validity, list of unit validities, choice of the user in the list of unit validities, list of groups of pages to be deleted, customized documentation) allow on the one hand to verify the operation of the process and are also useful to readjust the customized documentation or to allow the constitution of other customized documentation without starting from scratch. Some of this information can also be used to facilitate the creation of new customized documentation in case of evolution (revision) of the overall documentation. The production method of the assembly file will now be described with reference to FIGS. 3 and 4. FIG. 3 schematically represents the main functional elements of a device 10 for producing the assembly file. It should be noted that the creation of the assembly file is normally performed by computer means (eg a computer programmed to implement the method described here) and, therefore, we will not necessarily find a match one by one between the elements shown in Figure 3 and the software components that perform the corresponding functions. However, the invention covers other ways of making the device of FIG. 3 such as, for example, the use of "cloud" architecture. As illustrated in FIG. 3, the device 10 for producing the assembly file is arranged to receive as input the global documentation D1 in electronic form. The invention is not particularly limited as to the computer format under which the electronic documentation is used: PDF, XML, HTML and other files may be used according to the wishes of the designer and / or the needs of the users. The assembly file production device 10 comprises a validity extraction unit 20, a memory 30, a parsing unit 40 and an assembly file production unit 50. The extraction unit 20 validates comprises processing means for processing the global documentation D1 received in order to extract information indicating the respective validity of each group of pages. A memory 30 stores validness location rules R1 that are used by the validity extraction unit 20 to determine where in the global documentation D1 the validity information should be searched. A set of couples "page-validity group" is transmitted from the validity extraction unit 20 to the parsing unit 40. The parsing unit 40 includes a deletion module 42 serving to delete of the set of couples "group of pages-validity" the 10 data which concern the groups of pages applicable in all the cases. In order to be able to identify the page groups that are applicable to all product configurations, the deletion module 42 refers to information R2 stored in the memory 30 and which indicates the permissible syntaxes of the validities. The parsing unit 40 also includes a module 44 for calculating the unit values, i.e., characteristics which, in logical combination, determine which product configurations are affected by which groups of specialized pages. The module 44 for calculating the unit values also refers to the information R2 of the memory 30 which defines the permissible syntaxes of the validities in order to be able to break down combined validity into unitary values. In addition, the parsing unit 40 may optionally include a module 46 for classifying the unit validities used to classify the unit values according to predetermined categories and able to check for possible conflicts between unit values on the basis of stored rules of compatibility of the units. R3 validations, established by the manufacturer's experts. The parsing unit 40 outputs the pairs "page-validity group" associated with the groups of specialized pages as well as all the unit values (possibly sorted by category). The assembly file production unit 50 creates the assembly file in a predefined format by including the "validity-page group" data associated with the specialized page groups and the list of unit validities, optionally sorted by category. Figure 4 shows the main steps of an embodiment of the method of creating the assembly file. The central portion of FIG. 4 shows the main steps E1-E4 of this example of the method of producing the assembly file while the right-hand part of FIG. 4 indicates the elements that became available at the end of the different process steps and the left side shows information that is used during the process flow. The step E1 of the method of creating the assembly file according to FIG. 4 consists in creating the list of the groups of pages associated with the validities relating thereto. The unit for extracting the validities 20 of the device of FIG. 3 receives the global documentation D1 and extracts the validities by employing rules R1 which specify the location of the validities within the global documentation D1, these rules being stored in the database. storage medium 30.

For example, when the location rules R1 indicate that the validities are written in the footers of the global documentation D1, the validity extraction unit 20 identifies the footers (for example by using control codes part of the content of the global documentation) and extracts the content. Depending on the case, the validity extraction unit 20 can be configured to compare the validities of the consecutive pages of the global documentation in order to detect the points of change of validity, the latter corresponding to the boundaries between groups of successive pages. For each group of pages, the validity extraction unit 20 produces an identifier of the group of pages concerned associated with the validity extracted from the footers of the latter. The validities are in different locations depending on the structure of the overall documentation concerned. The location rules R1 specify, therefore, the location of the validities in the targeted documentation. The way in which the location of the validities must be specified depends, therefore, on the application: depending on the case, these rules may, for example, indicate that it is necessary to refer to an attached structured file, to specify a particular zone of the 'header or footer, indicate a place in an opening of each document, indicate a particular tag (eg XPATH for XML or HTML documents), or others.

In particular, the method of the invention can be applied to structured documents in accordance with the current versions of the international specifications ATA 2200 (specification of the Air Transport Association of America) and S1000D (introduced by the European Association of Aerospace Material Manufacturers). (AECMA) and maintained by the Technical Publications Specification - 18 - Management Group (TPSMG) of ASD (AeroSpace and Defense Industries of Europe) and AIA (Aerospace Industries Association of America) ). The list of couples "page group-validity" Da is transmitted to the parsing unit 40. The next step E2 of the method of creating the assembly file is to delete from this list Da <groups of pages- validity> data that pertain to general page groups, that is, pages that are applicable to all product configurations described in the global documentation. The deletion module 42 forming part of the parsing unit 40 detects the general page groups by querying the validities of the list Da with regard to the valid syntaxes of validities R2 stored in the storage means 30. Often, no validity is specified in relation to the general pages of a global product documentation and, therefore, the lack of validity (or empty validity) should be interpreted as an indication of the general applicability of the relevant page. In other cases the general pages are associated with a validity expressing the notion of "all". The information R2 stored in relation to the validated syntaxes of the validities specify, for the documentation concerned, how to identify the general pages from the validities. Once the list of couples "modified page-validity group" Db has been established, it is necessary to extract the "unit validity" Dc. It should be noted that the module for calculating unit values 44 implements this step E3 of extracting unitary validities: by enumeration of the validities which are already unitary validities, and when it is a "combined" validity Which exploits a logical operator explicitly (AND, OR, NOT, parentheses, etc.) or implicitly (a validity which expresses a range which is equivalent to a set of different values), by the identification of the unit validities which are separated by the operators or covered by the range of values. In order to reduce the number of questions to be asked later to the operator, it is advantageous to implement additional processing during the production of the assembly file, in particular a step E4 in which the module 46 classification of unit validity assigns categories to unit values. The categories of validity are defined in particular according to the nature of the product concerned / its contexts of use / documentation. For example, in the case of product documentation relating to an aircraft, categories such as: product modifications (before or after entry into service), country of registration, regulation applicable, the commercial options present on the product, the appendices of the document, the supplements of the document, etc.

The rules for classifying the unit validities in the categories form part of the information defined by the "valid syntaxes of validities" R2 stored in the storage means 30 and they make it possible to classify the validities in each category of validity by a syntactic analysis, for example : o Category "changes" = validity that begins with the keyword "MOD" o Category "applicable certification authority" = validations "EASA" (European Aviation Safety Agency), "FAA" (in English "Federal Aviation Administration") ), "IAC / AR" (Anglicized initials of the Russian Certification Authority), etc. It may be advantageous to configure the unitary classification module 46 so that it generates an error message if a validity is found which does not correspond to any of the categories defined by the permitted syntaxes of the R2 validities. In such a case we could either review the allowed syntaxes of validities by creating the corresponding category, or retouch the global documentation, or the PLC will not designate the groups of pages concerned, the user will be informed through the project rules mentioned more top and it is possible to retouch manually the list of pages to delete It is necessary to summarize the content of the "validated syntaxes of validities" R2 according to the embodiment described above: - the syntax of the validities which makes it possible to identify the general page groups (typically "All" or empty), - the type and syntax of the operators potentially used by the validities (typically AND, OR, EXCEPT, parentheses), - a list of the categories of validities, and - the rules that allow classification of unit values in categories. Of course, the content of the "permitted syntaxes of validities" R2 may vary, especially if the list of unit validities is not sorted by categories. 2 99602 1 - 20 - The assembly file production unit 50 receives the modified list of the page-validity groups Db (that is to say the list applying to the specialized pages) and the list of validities Dc units (possibly the list Dd sorted by categories). This information is integrated into a file of determined format. There is no particular limitation on the format of the assembly file. An example of the implementation of the method of creating the customized documentation from the global documentation D1 and the assembly file D2 - corresponding to the steps S3 to S8 of FIG. 2 - will now be described in more detail in FIG. Referring to Figures 5 and 6. Figure 5 is a diagram showing an example of a server-client architecture that can be used to implement the method of the invention. FIG. 6 schematically shows images that are displayed to the customer during the course of the process using the architecture of FIG. 5. It will be understood that FIG. 5 shows only a simplified example of the equipment that can be used to implement an embodiment of the method according to the invention. It should be mentioned that the distribution of processing between the server and the client can be very different from that shown in Figure 5 and described below. In the example illustrated in FIG. 5, the filtering of the global documentation is performed at the server level and not at the client station, but the filtering can be done on the client side. Moreover, the method according to the invention can be implemented without using a server-client architecture, for example by using an autonomous station (for example, an autonomous station at the product operator level). ). Similarly, the images of FIG. 6 are provided for purely illustrative and non-limiting purposes. FIG. 5 shows a server 100 which is in communication with a client station 200 by means of a network R. According to the example of FIG. 5, the network R consists of a computer network (for example the Internet, a WAN or "Extended network", a LAN or "local area network", or other) and the client station 200 corresponds to a computer 210 and its peripherals 220-250. According to the example of FIG. 5, the client station 200 consists of a desktop computer 210 equipped with input means 220 (for example a mouse and a keyboard), a display unit 230 and a printer 250. It should be noted that the method of producing the custodialized product documentation can be implemented using client workstations of other types (for example: tablets, mobile telephones). high processing capacity, PDAs or PDAs, etc.) There are other variations that can occur in client-side equipment: for example, the means of entry used by the customer may include other devices than those shown in FIG. 5 (a touch screen, the keys of a mobile phone, etc.), and wireless links can be used to connect the client station and its peripherals. Typically, the method of producing the customized product documentation begins when the client issues a request to the server 100 by launching a computer application that is installed on its computer 210, or otherwise, accessible from the client computer. The application manages the display of a graphical interface on the screen 230 of the client station, monitors the actions of the client in relation to the graphical interface, and manages communications with the server. According to the example of FIG. 5, the server 100 notably comprises a processing unit or processor 110 and a storage means 120. Of course, other conventional components of a server (bus architecture, network card, and others) are also present but not shown since the details of these components do not characterize the invention. The processing unit 110 comprises an interface manager 180 which manages not only the communications between the server 100 and the network R but also the communications between the server 100 and the client, in particular the interaction with the application installed on the client's position. The processing unit 110 of the server comprises a unit 150 for determining the unit values selected by the customer, a unit 160 for calculating the pages to be deleted from the global documentation to obtain the customized documentation and a unit 170 for producing the documentation. customized product. These functional units of the processing unit 110 use the information stored in the storage means 120, in particular of the global documentation D1, information of the assembly file D2 and, possibly, certain configuration information D3 which corresponds unit validities that apply to certain product configurations. According to an exemplary embodiment, when the client launches on his station 200 the application for producing customized documentation of the product, he must first identify the "manufacturer" documentation that will serve as a basis for the production of his own customized documentation. Figure 6A shows an example of the image that is displayed on the client screen at this stage of the process after the application queries the server for documents stored in the storage means 120 thereof. this. According to the example of FIG. 6A, there is only a "manufacturer" documentation D1 stored in the storage means 120 of the server and therefore available to process: the documentation called "DocGlob-013". The client checks, therefore, the box corresponding to this documentation "DocGlob-013" and then moves to the next page. FIG. 6B shows an example of the image which is then displayed on the screen 230 and which enables the customer to use an existing product configuration or to enter a new configuration of the product. The application installed on the client computer queries the server for existing D3 configurations that are already defined. According to the example of Figure 6B there are already two defined product configurations - called "Applic_DocGlob-013_2011fév23_11: 27" and "Applic_DocGlob-013_2012jan09_15: 06", respectively. These existing product configurations correspond to two sets of unit values that the customer has defined in two previous sessions of creating custom documentation. From the screen of Figure 6B the customer can choose to use one of these existing configurations to extract documentation "DocGlob-013" customized documentation that will be specific to a product with the attributes and / or the usage context specificities corresponding to the set of unit validities of this existing configuration. It will be noted that according to the embodiment illustrated in FIG. 6, the system assigns to each existing configuration the name of the global documentation which was used as the basis for the production of the customized documentation during the session concerned, as well as a suffix chosen by the user. user who can possibly be initialized by default with the date and time of the beginning of this session. Such a naming system has the advantage of making it easy to identify each product configuration for which the customer has produced personalized documentation, but it is only one example of the rules of naming that can be retained, other naming rules are possible. According to the example of FIG. 5, the unit validity sets corresponding to the existing configurations "Applic_DocGlob-013_2011fév23_11: 27" and "Applic_DocGlob-013_2012jan09_15: 06" are stored in the storage means 120 of the server 100 (as the D3 configurations ). However, this data can be stored at the client station 200 or in any other suitable place. In the example of Figure 6B the customer has moved a cursor to indicate that he wishes to enter a new configuration of the product. When the customer moves to the next page (shown in Figure 6C) the system assigns a name to the new configuration and begins to present to the customer, category by category, the unit validities that are relevant to the determination of which page groups of the "DocGlob-013" documentation are applicable to the customer's product configuration. According to the example in Figure 6, the name assigned to this new configuration is "Applic_DocGlob-013_2012juin20_12: 28" because the entry of the details of this new configuration started during a session that started at 12:28 on June 20 2012. Again, this way of selecting the suffix at the end of the file name is just one example, different rules can be applied: for example the suffix can be the time of the end of the entry of the details of the configuration or any other desired suffix. According to the example of FIG. 6, the assembly file D2 associated with the documentation "DocGlob-013" includes unit validities in the following categories: "series and model", "options", "registration" and "modifications / service bulletins ". The unit values of the "series and model" category are displayed so that the operator can select those that apply to his product instance. According to the example shown in FIG. 6C, the operator checks the box indicating that his product is a model of series 2 (in this example the operator does not need to specify the model because this data does not belong to the model). has no impact on the pages of the overall documentation that are applicable to the product). When the operator moves to the next page, the unit 150 for determining the selected unit validities takes note of his choice of the unit values of the previous page (this operation is carried out each time the choice of the operator with regard to a screen for selection of unit validity becomes final). The operator then moves to the next page (see Figure 6D) where he can select from options A, B, D and F, those that apply to his product.

According to the example shown in Figure 6D, the operator checks the box that indicates that his product is equipped with options A and B. On the next page the operator can indicate where his product is registered, by selecting among the choices " EASA "," FAA "and" others ". In the example shown in Figure 6E, the operator checks the box indicating that his product is registered in a country where EASA regulations are applicable. On the next page (Fig. 6F) the operator - 24 - can finally select among the modifications "MOD 566 or SB 100", "MOD 580 or SB 078", "MOD 950 or SB 100" those which are relevant for the described configuration. According to the example shown in FIG. 6F, the operator can not tick any box, which indicates that his product is not affected by any of the identified modifications. This time, when the operator moves to the next page, he completes the selection phase among the unit validities of the assembly file. Unit 150 for determining unit validity thus transmits to the unit for calculating the pages to be deleted 160 the integral list D3 of the unitary values selected by the operator at the level of the screens of FIGS. 6C to 6F.

Optionally, the unity unit determination unit 150 also transmits the list D3 to the storage means 120. It is possible that the choice of the user in one of the categories leads to the consequence that some or all of the The unit validity of a second category can not be applied to this product configuration.

In some embodiments of the invention, these cases are identified when categorical unit values are classified (using compatibility rules of the stored R3 validities in the same way as the possible syntaxes of the validities, and established by experts. of the constructor) and the options presented to the user in relation to each category depend on these previous choices.

In the case where the user's previous choices indicate that none of the unit values of a category can not apply in this case, the display of this category does not occur. In this way the number of choices presented to the user is further reduced. The page calculation unit compiles the user's choices and the assembly file information to define a list of the D5 page groups that it is desirable to delete: in this list D5, preferably the identifiers of the groups pages are associated with the related validities. This list D5 (and possibly associated validity data) can also be stored in the storage means 120 for traceability purposes.

It may be advantageous to present the D5 list of "page group - validity" pairs to the user next to the validity information so that he can control the page groups that the system proposes to delete (see Fig. 6G). Any inconsistencies (duplicates, missing choices, incompatibilities, ...) are detected by the calculation unit of the pages to be deleted 160 according to project-specific rules, and displayed to the operator. These - inconsistencies appear when the input data have flaws or inconsistencies. The operator can, in case of inconsistency or according to his judgment, directly adjust the list of groups of pages to be deleted. As a last resort, it confirms the list of groups of pages to delete.

Once the operator has confirmed his choice of pages to delete, the list of groups of pages to delete is stored. Its subsequent consultation can prove that the documentation was correctly constituted since it traces the gaps between the overall documentation and the customized documentation. The customized documentation is now produced from the global documentation by the custom documentation production unit 170. The nondetained specialized page groups are deleted in order to obtain customized electronic documentation. Customized electronic documentation is used by operators in the way they choose. According to the example provided in FIG. 6H, the operator can choose to either print his customized documentation or to download it. Of course other choices can be provided. It should be noted that to implement the method the invention is not limited to the use of a client-server architecture. According to some embodiments of the invention the customized product documentation is produced autonomously by the customer and the functions of the units 150 to 170 of the server of FIG. 5 are then implemented by the central unit (or other suitable element) of the client station 200. In such cases the data D1, D2 and possibly D3 are either stored on a support available at the client station or made accessible to the latter by network. Such embodiments may produce the desired client documentation from an already approved and distributed global documentation. According to other embodiments of the invention, the manufacturer is responsible for producing the customized documentation and typically uses a single computer device to produce the assembly file and the customized documentation. When the manufacturer takes care of the production of the customized documentation, it is possible to reduce the time necessary to produce the customized documentation during an update or revision by maintaining an archive (regularly updated) of the configurations of the products held. by the customers, these configurations being expressed in terms of the combinations of the unit validities applicable to the products. When the constructor wishes to update or overhaul the overall documentation, the archived configurations are then used as the transformation matrix to convert the update or revision into custom documentation. Although particular embodiments of the present invention have been described above, those skilled in the art will appreciate that various modifications and arrangements may be practiced therein without departing from the scope of the present invention. More particularly, although the embodiment described in detail above discusses the production and use of an assembly file, those skilled in the art will appreciate that a file-like presentation is not essential. : the "valid-page-group" pairs and the unit-validity list can be disseminated and stored in any useful form (as database fields, registry data, or other). In addition, the description above deals with the case of the production of a customized documentation of a product to a particular configuration of a product (a single set of attributes and a single context of use). However, the invention is not particularly limited compared to the number of product configurations that are described in the customized documentation until all the variants covered by the overall documentation are described. It should therefore be understood that the invention relates to the production of a customized documentation of a product which relates to a subset of the configurations described by the global documentation, this subset may relate to a single configuration of the product or two or more product configurations.

Claims (10)

REVENDICATIONS1. Automated production method, based on a global documentation of a product describing different configurations of a product in terms of the attributes of the product and / or in terms of the specificities of the context of use of the product, documentation customized product to a subset of said product configurations, some specialized parts of the overall documentation not being applicable to certain product configurations, characterized in that the method comprises the steps of: in a preparatory phase: identifying, in the global documentation, information indicating the validity of the different parts of the overall documentation with regard to the attributes of the product and / or with regard to the specificities of the context of use of the product, the validity information determining the applicability of the specialized parts from global documentation to product configurations, retrieve, inform validity clauses identified during the identification step, unit validities corresponding to the product attributes and / or to the specificities of the context of use of the product which, in logical combination, determine the applicability of the specialized parts of the documentation overall to the product configurations, and generate a list of the unit validities extracted in the previous step and links between the different specialized parts of the overall documentation and the unit validities, or the corresponding combinations of unit values; and in an exploitation phase: identifying those unit validities of said list which correspond to the attributes of said subset of the product configurations and / or to the specificities of the context of use of said subset of the product configurations, calculating the specialized parts of the global documentation corresponding to the combination of the unit validities identified during the identification step; and- 28 - produce the customized documentation by omitting from the global documentation the specialized parties that were not selected during the calculation step. 2. Automated method for producing customized documentation of a product according to claim 1, characterized in that the step of identifying the unit validities corresponding to the configuration (configurations) of a user's product comprises the selection by user among the unit validities defined during the extraction step. 3. Automated method for producing customized documentation of a product according to claim 2, characterized in that it comprises the step of sorting the unitary validity by categories, and the step of presentation by categories of the unitary validity to the 'user. 4. Automated method for producing customized documentation of a product according to any one of claims 1 to 3, characterized in that it comprises the step of recording information designating a set of unitary values, said set of validities units corresponding to a combination of attributes and / or product usage context specificities, and in that the selection step includes the ability to provide the user with the ability to select said set of unit validities designated by the recorded information. 5. Automated method for producing customized documentation of a product according to any one of claims 1 to 4, characterized in that it comprises the steps of: presenting to a user the list of specialized parts of the proposed global documentation to be deleted to form the customized product documentation, and adjust, based on commands received from the user, the list of specialized parts of the overall documentation to be deleted to obtain the customized product documentation. 6. Automated method for producing customized documentation of a product according to any one of claims 1 to 5, characterized in that it comprises the steps of: controlling, according to rules "project" defining the authorized structure 5 customized documentation, the list of specialized parts of the overall documentation selected or not used to build the customized documentation of the product; and indicate to the user any inconsistencies, especially in case of errors and inaccuracies in the source data. 10 An automated method for producing customized documentation of a product according to any one of claims 1 to 6, characterized in that it comprises the step of tracing the differences between the overall product documentation and the product documentation. customized. 15 8. Automated method for producing customized documentation of a product according to any one of claims 1 to 7, characterized in that it comprises the step of storing for traceability purposes the list of specialized parts of the documentation. overall to be deleted to constitute the customized documentation of the product. An automated method for producing customized documentation of a product according to claim 1, characterized in that it is applied to an overall product documentation after the overall product documentation has been disseminated. A computer program characterized by comprising program code instructions for executing the steps of the method according to any one of claims 1 to 9 when this program is executed by a processor.