Regardless of the type of technical product, technical documentation is of great importance in plant engineering. On the one hand, it enables the user of the product to use it for its intended purpose and to derive the greatest possible benefit from it. On the other hand, it also creates legal certainty for the manufacturer who, in the event of damage due to improper use, can point out that he has informed the user in accordance with the applicable regulations. In this way, technical documentation also serves risk management by preventing operating errors and the like.

However, technical documentation is particularly important in plant and mechanical engineering. This is because highly complex products are used here, the faulty operation, maintenance or servicing of which would have serious and expensive consequences. At the same time, the ever more complex machines and systems make the creation of classic technical documentation more difficult, since information is available in a quantity that is hardly manageable for humans. The use of document management systems and thus of software solutions that open up new possibilities for technical documentation is therefore becoming increasingly important.

You can find out more about technical documentation and what purpose it serves and which standards and requirements it must fulfil in our encyclopaedia article “Technical documentation: what is it?”.

You can also find more information about the importance of plant documentation and the requirements that are specifically placed on it in our encyclopaedia article “Plant documentation: What is it?”.