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This article discusses the use of Microcosm, an open hypermedia system developed by the University of Southampton's Multimedia Research Group for Pirelli Cables building wire factory at Aberdare, South Wales. An open hypermedia system allows a single multimedia resource base to be usled for a range of applications, and permits the users to have access to the stored information, in a structured manner. The use of this technology is now widely accepted in education, yet it has not been fully exploited within manufacturing industry for applications such as maintenance, fault diagnostics and operator training. The development of the application is discussed, together with guidelines for the authoring of future systems. With the integration of Microcosm with knowledge-based systems for fault finding and network technology communication to remote databases, the concept of industrial strength hypermedia can be realised. W 'ithin industry, operational and maintenance information is normally held in paper form, with the size of the documentation ranging from a few hundred pages for a medium-sized industrial machine tool, to thousands of individual manuals, with supporting engineering drawings, for a complete manufacturing plant. In practice a number of problems with information retrieval from paper-based documentation can be highlighted: 0 With a paper-based system, if the issuing of updates and modification notes is not rigorously enforced, the available documentation may not be the latest version. 0 The constant cross referencing between text, engineering drawings and parts lists can be both time consuming and prone to error. The quality of the documentation, particularly on the shop floor, can be very poor.

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Many organizations are seeking to improve their competitiveness through the use of information technology. The industrial strength hypermedia approach to information man agement and delivery allows a single multimedia resource base to be used for a range of applications, and permits a user to have controlled access to the requ ired information, in an easily accessible and structured manner. The development of an industrial hypermedia application requ ires the adoption of procedures for system design, authoring, and delivery. This paper presents a design mod el that allows the structured development of industrial strength hypermedia. The authoring approach adopted at South ampton is discussed in this paper, and includes the use of Modular-Hypermedia Applications an d clustering to reduce authorin g effort. This approach to information management is illustrated by the development of a large-scale hypermedia information system for Pirelli Cables Ltd, Southampton, UK. In order to assess user acceptance, trials have been undertaken, the results of which are presented.

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