Language Independent Transfer of Assembly Knowledge

Transferring assembly knowledge for workers with different cultural and linguistic background is challenging. The established solution of translating written instructions into multiple languages is mostly cost intensive, holds a potential for mistakes and the result might be hard to understand. To cope with this challenge, three different assembly instructions with language reduced or language independent content have been tested in a study with students in Vietnam and Germany. The types of instructions were interactive 3D-PDF, Utility-Film and illustrated manual. Assembly errors, assembly time, safety symbol awareness and assembly sequences understanding are compared and evaluated based on students' technical pre-knowledge and experience. The 3D-PDF showed to be the best solution to be applied in this complex environment, because users were able to assemble the parts faster and experienced a higher degree of interactivity compared to the other instructions.