Automating Complex High-Volume Technical Paper and Journal Article Page Composition with XML and InDesign
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The document outlines the automation of technical paper and journal article production at SAE International, focusing on processes involving XML and InDesign to improve efficiency and quality. It highlights key personnel roles, historical timelines of technological transitions, and the resulting advancements in production efficiency and output quality. The changes led to significant improvements in volume, time, and resource management while achieving a more consistent and flexible publishing process.
Automating Complex High-Volume Technical Paper and Journal Article Page Composition with XML and InDesign
- 1. Automating Complex High-Volume Technical Paper and Journal Article Page Composition with XML and InDesign Becky Fadik, SAE Business Unit Leader, Content Management Mandy May, SAE Technical Publications and Control Specialist September 23, 2014
- 2. Valuable Content Transformed • Document Digitization • XML and HTML Conversion • eBook Production • Hosted Solutions • Big Data Automation • Conversion Management • Editorial Services • Harmonizer
- 3. Experience the DCL Difference DCL blends years of conversion experience with cutting-edge technology and the infrastructure to make the process easy and efficient. • World-Class Services • Leading-Edge Technology • Unparalleled Infrastructure • US-Based Management • Complex-Content Expertise • 24/7 Online Project Tracking • Automated Quality Control • Global Capabilities
- 4. We Serve a Very Broad Client Base . . .
- 5. . . . Spanning All Industries • Aerospace • Associations • Defense • Distribution • Education • Financial • Government • Libraries • Life Sciences • Manufacturing • Medical • Museums • Periodicals • Professional • Publishing • Reference • Research • Societies • Software • STM • Technology • Telecommunications • Universities • Utilities
- 6. OUR PRESENTERS Becky Fadik, SAE Business Unit Leader, Content Management • Currently serves as the Manager of Content Management, which supports one of SAE’s key strategic initiatives for sustainability and growth. The unit serves as a hub between the product and support functions required to acquire, publish and maintain content by providing technical editing, content classification, content publishing, information management and content archival for existing and new content. • From 2000- 2009, Becky served in a key role as SAE’s Senior Organizational Development Consultant and was responsible for improving SAE’s overall organizational effectiveness with both member and staff groups. • Served on several quality implementation teams and in the mid-90's, managed SAE's quality program. Part of a team that established SAE's, Process Resource Center, a unique resource for an association designed to improve organizational effectiveness by providing process leadership and training. Mandy May, SAE Technical Publications and Control Specialist • Currently serves as the team lead responsible for ensuring successful execution of all editorial and conversion processes in the digital publishing work, making adjustments/improvements to workflow processes to gain efficiencies and continually improve output quality. • Mandy’s experience at SAE is broad providing her with the knowledge to be a founding associate of the Content Management Business Unit established in January 2010. • Mandy introduced many new components to the SAE digital publishing and delivery function including standardized operating procedures, value-add components to content particularly with SAE’s eBooks, and experimentation with epub production for technical papers. Most importantly, Mandy was instrumental in the transition from Antenna House to InDesign as the SAE publishing tool.
- 7. SAE INTERNATIONAL • Is a 501c3 organization • Began in 1905 as the Society of Automobile Engineers; changed its name in 1916 to the Society of Automotive Engineers to better encompass the burgeoning mobility industry • Has an operating budget of $57 million • Has offices in Warrendale, Pa.; Troy, Mich.; Washington, D.C.; London, England; and Shanghai, China
- 8. SAE INTERNATIONAL • A compendium of over 35,000 ground vehicle, aerospace and aerospace material specifications of which 8,300 are current standards • Offers nearly 175 professional development classroom courses and 90 e-learning products • Publishes or co-publishes hundreds of technical and historical books, CD-ROMs and Web-based products • Publishes 3,000 technical papers and journal articles per year
- 9. CHALLENGE • Reduce time to market • Remain resource neutral • Improve output consistency and quality • Meet or exceed Service Level Agreement
- 11. Timeline for Change • Pre-2010 • Papers published as submitted by author • Major effort to convert all historical papers to XML • 2010 • Implemented Content Management System • Introduced XML conversion process • Assumed responsibility for formatting and publishing all technical papers/journal articles • Selected Antenna House as publishing tool • Developed XSL FO in house
- 12. Timeline for Change • 2011 • Continued to improve XSL FO • Upgrades to Antenna House • Many process improvements made – whitespace reduced; improved placement of figures, etc. • 2012 • Exploration and selection of InDesign as publishing software • Recognized value of using InDesign • Vendor (InDesign process tools) selected based on knowledge of InDesign (not style sheet development)
- 13. Timeline for Change • 2013 (1Q-3Q) • Introduced a new process of using Adobe InDesign desktop publishing software to publish some of the more complex papers • Dual publishing systems in play (Adobe and Antenna House) • Multiple style sheets required • Some efficiency gained; more work required • Publish once – manual process
- 14. Timeline for Change • 2013 (4Q) • New vendor selected based on style sheet development experience, InDesign knowledge and past experience • Agile development process used • Initiated work in November • 2014 • Iterative testing during development • Successfully implemented InDesign style sheet (not sheets) • Batch processing • Publish once - automated
- 15. Why the Change • Stronger focus on quality • Volume increasing annually • Time to publish decreasing • Resource neutral
- 16. Goal: Improve production efficiency and quality of SAE Technical papers and journal articles. SUCCESS!!!
- 17. Improve Production Efficiency and Quality 100% 90% 80% 70% 60% 50% 40% 30% 20% 10% 0% Publishing Timeline SAE World Congress Week 1 Week 2 Week 3 Week 4 Week 5 Week 6 Week 7 Week 8 Week 9 2014 (1477) 2013 (1369) 2012 (1177) 2011 (1256) 2010 (1092)
- 18. Improve Production Efficiency and Quality 5000 4500 4000 3500 3000 2500 2000 1500 1000 500 0 Volume and Time SAE World Congress 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 Volume Time
- 19. Improve Production Efficiency and Quality 4 3.5 3 2.5 2 1.5 1 0.5 0 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 Hours Hours per Paper SAE World Congress
- 20. Improve Production Efficiency and Quality Paper Quality SAE World Congress Issue Number of Occurrences Percentage of Total Request for Change Declined 22 1% Format/Lay-out 13 <1%
- 21. Benefits – Immediate improvements realized (examples) – Spacing improved – spacing between preceding paragraph and heading varies depending on the level of heading – Large graphics – can now appear at the top or bottom of page – Elimination of more whitespace – XML file remains in pristine condition – no edits necessary – Publish once – automated process – More flexibility with layout – Production capability increased • Volume • Time • Resources
- 22. Lessons Learned – Fully understand the scope of the project – over estimate the time to complete – Agile development process works well – Select the right vendor – Rely heavily on vendor recommendations – Involve your team experts » Project Management » User Acceptance Testing » Training
- 23. Q&A Brian Trombley National Sales Director btrombley@dclab.com Becky Fadik Business Unit Leader, beckyb@sae.org Mandy May Technical Publications and Control Specialist mmay@sae.org
Editor's Notes
- #7: Thank you Brian. Mandy and I are thrilled to share our journey moving from a manual pass through operation to an automated publishing system. As background, SAE International is a global body of scientists, engineers, and practitioners that advances self-propelled vehicle and system knowledge in a neutral forum for the benefit of society. We were founded in 1905 with offices in the United States, England, and China.
- #8: Thank you Brian. Mandy and I are thrilled to share our journey moving from a manual pass through operation to an automated publishing system. As background, SAE International is a global body of scientists, engineers, and practitioners that advances self-propelled vehicle and system knowledge in a neutral forum for the benefit of society. We were founded in 1905 with offices in the United States, England, and China.
- #9: We fulfill our mission by developing and delivering knowledge solutions such as industry standards, professional development and training, conferences, books, technical papers and journal articles. Our focus today is on the journey we started in 2010 to automate our publishing process. There were many bumps along the way, many false starts, and all the things associated with a start up organization.
- #10: The challenges we needed to address have been consistent throughout our five year history. Delivering relevant content in a timely manner was at the top of our list of actions. I knew going into the start up that I would be limited with my staff and would remain resource neutral for at least 5-7 years. And finally, the look and quality of the documents varied as we simply released (published) the manuscript as supplied by the author. It was time to take our publishing efforts to the next level.
- #11: Mandy will share the progress we have made in five years to address these challenges.
- #15: The image on the left is: Identification of Sound Source Model Using Inverse-Numerical Acoustic Analysis: Validation of Effectiveness and Applicability (file name: 2014-01-2318) The image on the right is: Effects of Liquid Cargo on Lateral Stability of B-Train Combination2014- (file name: 2014-01-2319)
- #17: Our initiative to improve production efficiency and quality of SAE technical papers and journal articles proved to be highly successful. Here are a few statistics…
- #18: The efficiencies gained are clearly shown here. Prior to 2014, it has taken 8 weeks to publish papers with the exception of 2011 where it took 9 weeks. If you will recall from the previous slide, our numbers have been increasing annually. In 2014, we published 1,477 papers in 7 weeks, and, with one less publication specialist clearly demonstrating the production efficiency that we gained.
- #19: When looking at our productivity increases
- #21: We look at a variety of errors that occur during the publishing process. The first issue deals with the author’s request to make a correction to the paper. There were only 22 occurrences of this and all of which were declined as they were not showstoppers or made the paper technically invalid. Another common issue is the format/lay-out of the paper. All papers go through a rigorous review before being published to ensure compliance with all product specifications. Request to “reformat” are typically denied.
- #23: We are moving in this same direction with another product line and will apply many of the lessons we learned from our current experience. I’d like to share some our lessons with you… The most important aspect is to fully understand the scope of the project. I underestimated the time to complete the project. This is why the agile development process employed by DCL worked so well. As Mandy mentioned, the iterative design, develop, test phases helped us meet a critical deadline. Vendor selection is key to success. During our first attempt to use InDesign, we engaged an InDesign expert with minimal style sheet experience. On our second attempt, we reversed the order of importance and selected DCL who provided extensive style sheet development capability coupled with strong InDesign experience. DCL provided the expertise and guidance we needed for this project to be successful. We relied heavily on the recommendations from the developer and gained more than we thought possible. Some of which Mandy has shared with you. Involve your team experts. The entire Content Management Team participated in the user acceptance testing. This was important as each person brought a different skill level to the table as well as experience. The combined knowledge of the team helped produce a high quality, efficient tool. Success was achieved through a partnership. A partnership between SAE and DCL.