Slides presented by John Walker of NXP Semiconductors at the Information Energy 2013 Conference in Utrecht on 13 June 2013

1. What we’re doing with at NXP
John Walker
NXP Semiconductors
June, 13, 2013

2. About NXP
NXP is a semiconductor (microchip) manufacturer
Established: 2006 (formerly a division of Philips) with 50+
years of experience in semiconductors
Headquarters: Eindhoven, The Netherlands
Customers include Apple, Bosch, Continental, Delphi,
Giesecke/Devrient, Harman/Becker, Huawei, Nokia,
Samsung and ZTE
Portfolio of 20,000+ products
June 20, 2013
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3. Mt. DITA
Sometimes the move to DITA
can seem an insurmountable
challenge
All or nothing approach
Long timescales to see tangible
results (18+ months)
As a result many implementation
projects never reach the summit
June 20, 2013
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4. Lucky for us there are no mountains
in The Netherlands
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5. HERE’S HOW WE DID IT @NXP
Show & Tell
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6. June 20, 2013
The bad old days
Stone aged attitude to product information
Document-centric product information management
– Multiple separately-maintained content silos
– Content re-use is manual copy and paste or, worse, re-typing
Consequences for NXP:
– Inconsistent content and uncontrolled publications
– Duplicated effort and extra time to publish
– Error prone and costly to maintain
– Highly-complex process and architecture
Consequences for our partners and customers:
– Unclear what information represents „the truth‟
– Manual effort to gather product information
– Difficult to find all new and updated products
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7. June 20, 2013
The vision: Unified Content Strategy
Create Once,
Approve once,
Re-Use Many Times
Data
sheet
Flyer Product
home page
Selection
guide
Electronic
message
Partner
sites
Online
search
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8. June 20, 2013
Structured content types
Some content is loosely structured natural
language, e.g.:
– Functional product descriptions
– Product family and application descriptions
– News topics and press releases
Some content is highly structured
semantic data, e.g.:
– Product master data
– Chemical content
– Parametric content
We need to handle both content types and
integrate these to create our publications
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9. Path to DITA
Initial focus (4 yrs) on
highly structured content
– Highly semantic property-based markup of
individual values
Great results, but:
– Huge amount of time and effort to set up
– No real output until 2009
– Only partial coverage of product portfolio
– Not a good fit for natural language content
In 2010 we decided to tackle
loosely structured content
– DITA was obvious choice
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10. Why DITA?
„Agnostic‟ source format for multiple output formats
Separate structure/semantics from style
Topic-based approach enables content to be
easily re-used across deliverables
Native support for translation/localization
Integrate with existing XML publication processes
It‟s an Open standard
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11. Where to start?
Breadth not depth
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• Common structure
• More reuse
• Simpler
Generic
⇕ • More complex
• Less reuse
• Only published in data /spec sheets
Specific
If possible go for the generic content first
Minimize the challenge, maximize the visible impact

12. Our challenge: Value Proposition
The value proposition gives a succinct, clear articulation of values
associated with the product(s) to the customer
“Hot topic” with marketing folks = demand from business
Content appears in multiple publication deliverables
Plenty of opportunity for reuse
Simple structure
Applies to all products
Existing process had room for improvement
Perfect opportunity to show what we can do
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13. High-level plan
Go-live
Final test
Migrate content
Implement
Technical specification
Define Scope and goals
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14. Scope and goals
Scope: Value proposition
content published on nxp.com
Goals:
– Get management of content
back in NXP
– Multi-channel output (web,
mobile, newsletter)
– Enable reuse
– Prepare for translation
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15. Technical specification
The value proposition is a specialized DITA
map that helps control what content must be
included in an NXP value proposition
A value proposition can be linked to the
individual product(s) and/or defined
groups/categories of products
It contains references to the DITA topics which
are managed separately to enable structured
re-use of the content across value propositions
The content model for topics provides far more
flexibility than previously available: paragraphs,
lists, tables, images, links, etc.
? = optional topic
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16. Implementation
Componize
– Component Content Management (CCM) tool built on top of Alfresco
– Advanced metadata and link extraction
– Smarter management of what is used where
– Sophisticated version and configuration management of content
– Built-in implementation of DITA open toolkit for publishing
XMAX
– Browser-based WYSIWIG-ish editing environment for DITA content
Minor specializations
– NXP-specific metadata
– Value proposition map
– Constraints
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17. Migrate content
Best source identified as website database
HTML content stored in Oracle DB
– Not strict HTML with lots of strange characters
Exported in XML enclosed in CDATA
Transform using XSLT
– Used disable-output-escaping to unwrap CDATA
Fix invalid structure
– Liberal use of grep and regex
4000+ maps
12000+ topics
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18. Publication
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DITA-OT to render „vanilla‟ XHTML
XHTML map and topics put in ZIP
ZIP „linked‟ to product
FTP to website
Extract and load to Oracle DB
Generate website + mobile apps

19. June 20, 2013
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Web == Print == Mobile

20. Translation
We use XTM Cloud for process and TM
DITA enables seamless use of the standard translation
interchange format, XLIFF
– We send DITA in source language and get translated DITA
back
During initial project 150k words translated and online in 6
weeks
New projects created every 1-2 months
Without using DITA, XLIFF and a TM, translation would not
be feasible
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21. What went well
Content migration easier than
expected
Cleaned up a lot of messy
markup
Showed DITA really works
No visible changes in
publications
Met project goals
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22. What didn’t
Underestimated change
management needs with some
project stakeholders
Went live with another tricky
project
– DITA unfairly seen as cause of
issues
System performance and UI
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23. Facts and figures
Number of DITA maps: 11,000+
Number of DITA topics: 43,000+
On average a VP is re-used for 2.27 products
One VP is re-used is for 223 products!
At last count our source (English) DITA content
contained 1,018,093 words including 489,705
repetitions
June 20, 2013
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en-
US, 666
3
ja-
JP, 3208
zh-
CN, 703
ru-
RU, 435
ko-
KR, 26

24. Points for further improvement
Broaden coverage of DITA
– Still not source for all technical documentation
Rollout tooling through company
Ease of use
Simplify web and mobile publication process
Increase reuse
Reporting
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25. Key points
Ensure tangible deliverables and results as early as
possible
Stick to your principles, but be pragmatic
Avoid scope creep, but be opportunistic
Don‟t tackle too much in one go
Learn from your mistakes (and others‟)
Pay attention to communication
Cut the jargon
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26. Any Questions?
June 20, 2013
John Walker
Business Analyst
Email: john.walker@nxp.com
Skype: jaw111
Twitter: @wohnjalker
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