Digital catalogs increase quality while improving workflows
Creating digital catalogs with Zmags has helped MAN Diesel save up to 1600 annual man-hours.
The Documentation and Translation group of MAN Diesel is responsible for creating promotional collateral and documentation for various types of diesel engines. Shipyards need very detailed information about the engines, so an Engine Project Guide can contain more than 300 pages filled with facts and documentation for a single type of engine; the Engine Programmes are more than 100 pages containing all of the engine variants.
Dramatically reducing time-to-market
A diesel engine is a low-volume commodity, so MAN Diesel offers print versions of their catalogs that are produced in small batches. To supplement their marketing program, they offer online versions of their catalogs using Zmags’ ICM solution. According to Erik G. Lund, Manager at the Documentation and Translation department at MAN Diesel, the online versions have several advantages: “Most important, we are now able to reduce time-to-market dramatically. When we are done designing a new engine programme, we can publish the online version within a few hours. In addition, we provide a version that is aligned with the look, feel and quality of the hard copy.”
User-friendly and visually appealing online catalogs
Previously, MAN Diesel published their catalogs as static files on the web. The layout differed greatly from the print version, and the solution suffered from usability issues. The single most important factor for switching to a live page-turning version of the digital catalog was to reduce the workload required for setting up these pieces in a separate process. Switching from a static web version to online catalogs from Zmags helped MAN Diesel reduce the production time from up to 200 man-hours to just a couple of hours.“With Zmags, we are saving weeks of man-hours when producing our online catalog. The production time is now down to a few hours, depending on the number of links included in the digital catalog. But originally, we did not purchase the solution with time-savings in mind. We were looking for a user-friendly and visually appealing solution, and Zmags fully matched our requirements,” Erik G. Lund tells.
Nominated for best practice award
Due to the innovative use and vast reduction of man-hours, the ICM solution for online catalogs was nominated for the internal best practice award at MAN. The judges focused on various assessment criteria among the nominees that matched the brand values of MAN. Recognized among the nominees, the Zmags solution is perceived as dynamic, innovative, reliable and open in its use.
Next steps include spreading the usage of smart web publishing of catalogues in other areas of the company. Besides the catalogs, MAN Diesel is using Zmags for technical newsletters, project guides, brochures, papers and customer magazines. The simple pricing model and support for fine-grained user and content management inside the online publishing tool makes the decision easier to make when MAN Diesel expands their digital profile.
About MAN Diesel
MAN Diesel is the world’s leading provider of large bore diesel engines for marine and power plant applications. MAN Diesel employs approx. 8,000 staff, primarily in Germany, Denmark, France, the Czech Republic, India and China. The global after-sales organisation, MAN Diesel PrimeServ, comprises a network of the company’s own service centres, supported by authorised partners. MAN Diesel is a company of MAN SE, which is listed on the DAX share index of the 30 leading companies in Germany.