During eight decades of growth, AM General has established a reputation as a world leader in the design, engineering, production, and logistics support of military and special purpose vehicles. AM General is particularly well known for producing the High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicle (HMMWV, pronounced HUMVEE ®) and the HUMMER®. In addition, General Engine Products Inc (GEP), a wholly owned subsidiary of AM General Corp, produces OEM 6.5 liter diesel engines, both naturally aspirated and turbocharged, used in military, automotive, marine, and various other industrial and commercial applications.
AM General sells its vehicles worldwide, but the major share of production is for the United States Armed Forces. Apart from AM General''s own company philosophy, which is strongly focused on quality commitment and customer satisfaction, the company also has to fulfill the specific requirements of the U.S. Government.
These requirements also affect the way the product''s technical documentation is created. The Integrated Logistics Support (ILS) department of AM General, located in Livonia, MI, produces numerous types of technical manuals that allow the U.S. Armed Forces the ability to operate and service the wide range of the company''s vehicles and systems. Some of these are:
- Operator''s & Maintenance Manuals
- National Maintenance Work Requirements (NMWRs)
- Modification Work Orders (MWOs)
- Digest Articles
- Cargo Pocket "Smart Books"
- Repair Parts Special Tools Lists (RPSTL)
- Kit Installation Instructions.
AM General delivers paper manuals as well as electronic manuals, interactive electronic manuals (IETMs), and point-to-point interactive circuit schematics.
Shaping the Documentation: Specifications, Formats, Numbers
Many factors influence the way documentation is created and these are often industry-specific. Thus, serving the government and the armed forces means complying with specific requirements (also known as "Military Standards") and responding to specific demands, too. The challenge, however, is not only to comply with standards, but to do this with excellent quality and speed.
AM General masters these challenges by using IsoDraw and IsoDraw CADprocess by ITEDO Software for their technical illustration tasks. "We went from the drawing board directly to using IsoDraw in 1998. We found the transition to be extremely smooth and realized that this software is a major time-saver. Since we produce complex graphics, and update and change our graphics at a very rapid pace, IsoDraw improved our flexibility and productivity to a maximum," reports Larry Rink, manager, Integrated Logistics Support at AM General.
Here are some examples of how the ITEDO products serve AM General:
MIL-STD-40051B
MIL-STD-40051B is a military specification that prescribes the format and content of Dept of Defense technical publications. According to this standard, exploded view drawings are the preferred method for graphics. This specification is fully served by IsoDraw, since this program has been specifically developed for such purposes. It supports all characteristic features of traditional technical illustrations, such as the thick-thin line technique. What''s more, IsoDraw contains tools that have been designed to handle complicated illustration tasks more efficiently. In the case of AM General, the Shaft tool and the Wrap tool provide major benefits. "Since illustrating tire treads and complicated gear wheels is a steadily recurring task in our business, these tools have proved indispensable. Drawing these items manually would take hours, while IsoDraw reduces the effort to a few mouse-clicks," says Rink.
Creating Illustrations From Various Sources
At AM General, illustrations are produced from various sources, i.e. they are either drawn from scratch or traced from digital photographs. For example, there are many scanned images of the drawing board illustrations at AM General. All drawings were done manually until 1998. IsoDraw has easily fulfilled all of these tasks today. Apart from that, AM General has several licenses of IsoDraw CADprocess, which is currently used with a new vehicle series.
CADprocess allows the illustrators to use 3D IGES data that is developed by their CAD design group. They then convert the data into technical illustrations. The illustrators can handle design data without having access to or depending upon the company''s Unigraphics design station. In the 3D window of this program, the illustrator can, for example, rotate or explode the CAD drawing just as he needs it. Hidden lines are then eliminated automatically and the thick-and-thin line technique is applied correctly -- with a simple keystroke. One CAD drawing can serve many illustration requirements simultaneously.
"Although a minimum of editing might be necessary here and there in the resulting illustration, this method opens up another major savings potential for us at AM General. We are therefore beginning to migrate more and more to this method of sharing IGES files," concludes Larry Rink.
Further Use of the Illustrations
For the creation of their interactive electronic manuals, AM General uses EMS, a government-issued software. The vector graphics are very efficient and are enabled for interactive requirements. It is even possible to combine raster and vector information in IsoDraw for effective display as CGM files.For their paper-based documentation, AM General uses QuarkXpress and Photoshop to finish the manuals. Since IsoDraw supports a wide range of export formats, there is an almost seamless interface between these applications.
"IsoDraw is the state-of-the-art drawing software and we use it to produce high-quality graphics compliant to government specifications and requirements. The time-savings we are able to realize are tremendous: for example, we have cut the drawing time for our complex components by more than 50% -- and there is even more potential when using CADprocess!" concludes Larry Rink.