Outsourcing technical documentation or writing it in house?

In most machine-building companies documentation is produced in the design department – at the end of the project, when the machine has to be finished and nobody has time. The result is familiar: the manual of the previous machine is copied and adapted as far as time allows.

An in-house technical writing team solves this but pays off only if it is permanently busy. A service provider solves it too, provided it is clear what it takes on and what not. The sensible question is therefore not “in house or external” but: which activities need the company’s knowledge – and which mainly need time, method and practice?

Everything that is editorial craft can be outsourced. That includes facilitating the risk assessment: an external party can bring the method of EN ISO 12100 and structure the sessions, as long as the evaluations and decisions come from the manufacturer’s specialists.

The manufacturer is whoever designs or builds the machine and places it on the market under their own name. The Machinery Directive addresses its obligations to the manufacturer, who signs the declaration of conformity. Commissioning a provider changes nothing here: towards authorities and users the manufacturer remains responsible. What the provider in turn owes is governed by the contract between the two.

In practice this means the manufacturer defines the intended use, decides on protective measures, approves the manual technically and names in the declaration of conformity the person authorised to compile the technical file – who must be established in the European Union. And the manufacturer keeps the file. An approval that consists of a signature without reading is the most common weak point of outsourced documentation.

Whether an in-house team pays off depends on a few quantities: how evenly the work arises, how similar the machines are and how many languages are served. A series manufacturer with few types and constant changes is often well served by its own staff. A builder of special-purpose machines with a few very different projects a year has peaks that a permanent post does not fill – and between projects the practice is lost.

Often the mixed form is best: someone in house is responsible for documentation, obtains information and approves; the editorial work itself is contracted out. Knowledge stays in the company, and the volume fluctuates at the provider.

Documentation that starts only when the machine is finished always comes too late – and can no longer influence anything. The risk assessment belongs in the design phase because its results are meant to change the design. The manual can grow in parallel as soon as use, layout and operating concept are fixed.

For this the provider needs regulated access to the design data and a notice of every change that affects safety, operation or maintenance. It works most reliably when documentation is hooked into the company’s change process: no change counts as closed before it has been checked whether the manual or the risk assessment is affected.

The faults of outsourced documentation are almost never writing errors. They arise at the handover.

Five points spare most later discussions. First the scope: only the manual, or the risk assessment and technical file as well? Second the source files: in which format are the documents handed over, and who may go on editing them? Third the approval route: who reviews technically, who approves, within what time? Fourth the upkeep: how are changes reported and incorporated? Fifth confidentiality, because the provider sees design data.

With these points settled, outsourcing is not a surrender of control but a division of labour: the manufacturer decides, the provider turns that into documents which record those decisions traceably.