Session: 03-01-01: General Topics of Aerospace Materials

Paper Number: 110690

110690 - How to Write a Digital-Ready Standard 

As the world moves from analog to digital, engineering resources need to be accessed in a digital format.  This drive for digitization promotes interoperability between different systems to help drive efficiencies and development of complex products. While the industry hopes to get to a point where a single tool can be used to author both a digital standard and a PDF natively, we are not there yet. In the interim, SAE is using AI models to read and convert PDF standards into a true digital format.

Over the past year or two, SAE has digitized over 1500 parts and materials standards into a database format.  Throughout this process, SAE has learned a lot of lessons and helpful hints about how to structure tables, content, etc. to make it easier for AI models to be used to digitize a standard. 

This presentation provides recommendations for how to structure content, data tables, drawings/figures, and even standards documents themselves to make them machine-readable as well as human-readable.

Ultimately, the goal of this session is to get standards authors to think differently about standards.  Standards should no longer be viewed as individual stand-alone documents.  Standards need to be treated as data inputs into a database so that users of digital standards systems can search across standards.

Standards authors also need to understand how consistency will lead to simpler AI models required to digitize standards. And simpler AI models will lead to faster digitization, with less manual review and fewer external mapping tools required to support the digitization process. 

Presenting Author: Devshan Perera SAE International

Presenting Author Biography: Devshan Perera is a product management professional with over 7 years of experience. He is the Product Manager for Information Products at SAE International. In this role, Devshan is responsible for customer-centric development of the SAE Information Products, including SAE International Standards, Digital standards (OnQue) and SAE’s preprint server MobilityRxiv and the promotion of these resources through relevant marketing and communications.

Authors:

Leslie McKay SAE International
Devshan Perera SAE International