USE* have completed pilots to prove out their 100% digital workshop manual concept, where all published deliverables, including warranty repair times, have been created without reference to a physical car.

The USE* Publications method derives all of the methods (including labour time information) using only CAD data.

This USE* methodology is a faster and more cost effective alternative to the traditional method of stripping down and rebuilding a prototype vehicle and can represent a massive cost saving to the manufacturer, with prototypes costing as much as £200,000 per vehicle, and hours of preparation time wasted by tasks duplicated between methods authors, illustrators and labour times specialists. Using the Service Repair Times Database, a software tool developed by USE* IT, labour times, methods and illustrations can all be composed by a single engineer working only with CAD data. Working in this way, the average time to create each workshop manual procedure was just 3.2 hours.

Working with a prestigious OEM client, two small scale vehicle programmes provides a perfect opportunity to conduct a pilot for this method. In total, just over 200 methods and warranty labour times were produced in 20 weeks by three authors and a project manager, including over 600 illustrations.