VDI 2770 Consulting

Millions of times the companies in the process industry procure technical goods for new construction, expansion or maintenance of production plants. How should the product-accompanying documentation be designed so that it can be automatically adopted and later the accesses can be carried out quickly and purposefully? VDI 2770 sets the necessary minimum requirements and ensures standardization.

We have been actively involved in the drafting of the directive. Do you need detailed information or support when using the VDI 2770 for your own documentation? We will gladly assist you with all questions and tasks concerning the VDI 2770.

VDI 2770

With its specifications, VDI 2770 creates a common understanding of the structure and formats of documentation in digital form. A predefined set of document-related metadata enables clearly identification, assignment to the technical goods and classification according to content, type and purpose.

The aim of the VDI 2770 is to facilitate the provision of the documentation on the manufacturer side by means of a uniform standard, to simplify the storage on digital platforms and to automate the transfer of the documentation into the systems on the receiver side. Furthermore, a targeted access to the required documents is to be made possible, as well as to ensure long-term readability by the choice of the formats.

Classification

VDI 2770 sees the classification of each document in one of 12 predetermined categories, such as “drawings, plans“, “operation“, “maintenance“ or “contract documents“. This classification is made partly according to the type of content (e.g., “drawings, plans“), partly according to the purpose of the document
(e.g., “maintenance“). The classification of the documents allows faster and more targeted access to the required information.

Reference to the product

How do you find the right maintenance manual for a specific pump in the production plant?
Preferably, if the identification marks attached to the pump (for example, manufacturer, product number, or serial number) are unambiguous references to the relevant instructions.
For this reason, VDI 2770 requires that the document-related metadata contain the identification features that can be found on the technical good, so that a clear assignment is guaranteed and the corresponding document can be found quickly and securely if required.

Supply chain

Most technical goods are not completely produced by one manufacturer, but contain components from suppliers. The supplied products bring their own documentation with them. VDI 2770 therefor provides a container mechanism. Each manufacturer packs his own documents with the document-related metadata in a container. An additional document, the main document, references all contained documents. Furthermore the manufacturer puts the documentation containers of the supplied products into his container and supplements the main document with references to the supplied containers. This method allows easy delivery of supplied documentation in multi-level supply chains, that are typical of more complex goods.

Formats

In order to guarantee the long-term readability of the digital manufacturer documentation VDI 2770 requires the format PDF/A as the format for the documents. PDF/A is designed for this purpose and is widely used. The document-related metadata is created in XML format. For this the VDI 2770 specifies a DTD. Each document has its own XML metadata file. Document file (PDF/A) and associated metadata file (XML) are summarized in a ZIP container. These ZIP containers represent the individual documents in the documentation and, as described in the section “Supply chain“, are again grouped in a ZIP documentation container.

Find out how DOSCO Wrap Now can support you in implementing the VDI 2770 guidelines.

DOSCO Wrap Now

Further information on the guideline “VDI 2770“ can be found in the article
“Alle Macht den Metadaten“ by Robert Erfle, published in the journal “technische kommunikation“ 01/19.

Alle Macht den Metadaten