14.1 Documentation – What and Why?
14.1.1 The Role of Documentation
What precisely is the role of documentation in design engineering? Fundamentally, it has three objectives: defining, communicating, and recording information.
In the first instance, a prospective customer must define what he wants, why he wants it, when it's needed, and, ultimately, how much he's prepared to pay. Likewise, the supplier needs to define what he intends to do, how he intends to do it, what the delivered product will do, and when it will be delivered. Later, many other points need elaborating and defining, ranging from performance aspects to maintenance features. These definition aspects basically determine the contents of engineering documents.
The second aspect, communication, is self-explanatory. But this has an impact on the style of presentation. To be really useful, documents need to communicate information effectively. Text is not an especially good medium, as engineers...
