My name is Bob Wyen and I am a Technical Writer and Illustrator for Midmark Corporation.
The reason I wanted to get into the technical service and writing field was I found a need to simplify how to test and determine if a control was operating correctly, and if there was a need to replace a part or parts. Most instructions were produced by the engineering department and in many cases written in too complex of a manner for the field technicians to understand or even have the time to read. I wanted to help the people in the field as they were on the front lines and I knew what that was like.
Well as far as my education goes, I graduated from a 2 year Technical College in Minnesota and experience wise been in the service, engineering, and training field for 46 years.
I worked in an Engineering Lab and had to write many technical documents concerning testing, etc. on the products we manufactured. I also worked in Field Engineering, covering 5 states, dealing with users, installation, and service related problems for two companies. During these times I had to develop and hold training sessions for the Technicians. At Midmark, I worked in the Technical Service Department dealing with service and customer problems, traveling quite extensively all over the U.S., Canada, and Japan.
The place I started at prior to having a 2 year stint in the U.S. Army was Chrysler AirTemp. They manufactured commercial, domestic, and automotive heating and air conditioning equipment.
I started out in the Engineering Lab as an Engineering Technician, from there into field engineering, and eventually to manage Customer Relations for the division.
We used various meters, test stands, slide rules, and related hand tools to perform various test for certifications and calculations. Slide projectors, easels, and short instruction booklets were used to instruct technicians during training.
The next job I worked was at Hobart Corporation in Technical Writing. We used a camera for black and white photography, wrote instructions long hand, did drawings on a drafting board, typed up the instructions and then had them placed in a galley format at the print shop. We would then take the photos, and gallery formats paste them into graduated lined papers. These were then brought to the print shop for shooting a negative plate and printing.
Later, as the company grew, we began producing training videos which I did all the graphics using drawings and different colored paper media to produce animation for the video cameras.
I have been at Midmark for 22 years, over 9 years in the Technical Service department and the rest in Technical Publication. I will be retiring in February of 2010.
Now, everything is in electronic form and we rarely tear equipment down but do it electronically in many cases using ProE software.
We use different writing software such as Framemaker, Pagemaker, InDesign, & Microsoft Office Works.
We also use drawing software’s such as Product View, ProE, Freehand, ISO Draw, Illustrator, and Corel Draw. Photoshop may also be required in some instances.
There is quite a bit of difference from today to where it used to be in the early career of my writing. You need to know a variety of various software’s as everything has gone to electronic generated materials. You must be flexible as you may be working on new literature that uses the latest software the department is using one day and the next updating older material that was produced using the older software that was used in earlier productions.
You must also be able to become prolific in the various drawing software’s for producing electrical, hydraulic, and tubing diagrams, various artwork for the manuals including some very sophisticated exploded views for the parts section.
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