Search Technical Documentation
From the 80s
The line runs on machines from 1987 and the manual is a scanned PDF in German. A technician asks in plain language, in their own language, and gets the passage that answers it — with the document and page it came from. What the documents do not contain is reported as missing rather than filled in.
Your Challenges, Solved
Documentation from the eighties is scattered and cannot be searched
Scanned manuals get a text layer and are indexed by meaning, so a question finds the procedure even when the wording in the document is different. Where recognition is unreliable, the page is flagged rather than silently indexed.
A technician spends part of every shift looking for the right manual
The question is asked in plain language and the answer comes back with the document, page and paragraph. Verifying takes seconds; that is what makes it usable on the floor rather than interesting in a meeting.
Knowledge leaves the building when an experienced engineer retires
What is written down becomes searchable — maintenance logs, repair records, annotated drawings. What was never written down cannot be captured by software, and we say so before the project.
During a stoppage nobody has time to read forty pages
The answer arrives as the relevant passage with its source, not as a summary of the whole manual. Whether it is fast enough is measured on your own documents in the pilot, not promised here.
Manufacturing Use Cases
From legacy documentation to real-time troubleshooting — ARGUS transforms how manufacturing teams work.
Technical Documentation Search
Find specific procedures across thousands of manuals, schematics, and engineering notes — including scanned PDFs from decades ago.
Maintenance & Troubleshooting
Ask 'Why is machine X-200 overheating?' and get answers synthesized from maintenance logs, manuals, and historical repair records.
Spare Parts Intelligence
Cross-reference part numbers, compatibility tables, and supplier documentation to find the right component fast.
Legacy System Knowledge
Make 30-year-old SCADA documentation searchable. No more tribal knowledge locked in paper archives.
See It In Action
Based on Hydraulik_XR500_Handbuch_1989.pdf (pp. 47-52) and Maintenance_Log_Line3_2019-2024.xlsx:
1. Immediate Check: Check hydraulic fluid level and system pressure (spec: 42–45 bar at idle)
2. Common Cause: Seal wear on valve assembly (Part #XR500-V23). Last replaced: March 2022.
3. Recommended Action: Follow procedure WP-HYD-003. Estimated repair time: 4 hours.
FAQ
Our manuals are scans without a text layer. Does that work?+
Text recognition is part of the project, but it has to be agreed rather than assumed. Old drawings and faxed pages recognise poorly, and a wrong figure in a tolerance is worse than no automation: pages where recognition is unreliable are flagged instead of quietly indexed.
The documentation is in German and our technicians are not. Is that a problem?+
No, that is the common case. The question can be asked in the technician's language and the answer comes back in it, with the reference pointing at the original German passage — so the wording that matters legally or technically is still the source.
Can it answer from maintenance history as well as manuals?+
Yes, when the history exists as data — logs, repair records, spreadsheets. The two are kept apart in the answer: what the manual prescribes, and what happened on this machine before. Mixing them is how a one-off workaround turns into an apparent procedure.
What happens when the documents do not contain the answer?+
The system says so. For maintenance this matters more than elsewhere: a plausible-sounding procedure assembled from unrelated pages can damage a machine or a person. A missing answer is a usable result — it tells you what your documentation lacks.
Does it run without an internet connection on the shop floor?+
It can. Inference runs on our own hardware in the EEA by default, and an on-premise deployment inside your own network is possible where the plant is isolated — that is a question of where the hardware sits, agreed at the start rather than retrofitted.
How long does it take and what does it cost?+
A test on a handful of your documents takes a day. Discovery with a document audit starts at €5,000 and ends with the measured share of questions your own documents can answer. An implementation project on existing infrastructure starts at €25,000.
Who keeps it current when machines and procedures change?+
A procedure for that is part of the project: new revisions are taken in and superseded ones lose weight, so answers do not come from a withdrawn instruction. Without it the system answers from obsolete documents within months, which is worse than having none.
Ready to Unlock Your Legacy Knowledge?
See how ARGUS handles your specific technical documentation. Book a demo with our industrial solutions team.
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