Manual Mate: From 500-page manuals to instant step-by-step guidance for technicians

Overview

Technicians lose time scrolling through dense manuals to find repair steps, part numbers, and safety procedures. The result is slower turnaround, inconsistent fixes, and higher error risk during field maintenance.

To solve this, Optimus developed Manual Mate, an AI-powered assistant that runs where technicians work to extract procedures, diagnostics, and parts information from long PDF/DOCX manuals. Using Azure AI Foundry with document parsing and retrieval-augmented generation, Manual Mate returns precise answers and step-by-step guidance with citations to the source manual. No more battles with 500-page PDFs.

The Challenge

Technicians and service leads faced recurring bottlenecks:

Time lost in manuals: Finding the right steps or part IDs in unstructured documents slowed repairs.
Higher error risk: Critical safety warnings and diagnostic sequences were easy to miss in text-heavy PDFs.
Fragmented access: Field devices needed a lightweight way to search and verify procedures on the go.

The Solution

Optimus built Manual Mate, an AI assistant powered by Azure AI Foundry that turns manuals into a searchable, trustworthy knowledge layer:

Understands questions in plain English and pulls the exact steps, parts, and warnings from OEM manuals.
Ingests PDF/DOCX manuals, then chunks and indexes them into semantically meaningful sections.
Answers with source highlighting so technicians can quickly verify against the original paragraph or figure.
Works on mobile and web for tablet/field use with simple upload and search.

Result: A frictionless, trustworthy repair assistant that surfaces the right step at the right time, with the source to back it up.

Key Capabilities

Natural-Language Manual Search: Ask questions like “How do I replace the oil pressure sensor on model X123?” and get the exact steps.
PDF/DOCX Ingestion & Chunking: Automated parsing into procedures, warnings, and diagnostics.
Answer + Citation: Every answer includes a link or pointer to the exact paragraph/section.
Field-Ready UX: Lightweight mobile/web interface for upload, search, and verification.
Roadmap: Image-based guidance, voice interface, diagram parsing, and parts-ordering integration.

Multi-Agent Architecture

Agent Name	Role
Manual Mate Orchestrator	Coordinates query flow, tool calls, and response assembly.
Document Ingestion & Parsing Agent	Uses Document Intelligence to extract text, headings, tables.
Chunking & Indexing Agent	Splits content into semantic chunks and builds embeddings in vector search.
Retrieval & Answering Agent	Combines top chunks with the question via RAG and drafts precise answers.
Source Highlighting Agent	Attaches citations to exact paragraphs/sections for verification.
Safety & Warnings Agent	Elevates cautions and safety instructions in relevant procedures.
Frontend Delivery Agent	Presents answers and sources in a mobile/web experience for field use.

Deployment

Manual Mate was delivered as a phased rollout to field and depot teams.

Built on Azure AI Foundry, using Document Intelligence and Azure OpenAI with a RAG pattern.
Manuals uploaded to cloud storage, processed, chunked, and indexed in Azure AI Search with embeddings.
Deployed via Azure Container Apps with autoscaling and monitored through platform telemetry.

The Results

Faster troubleshooting: Target answers returned quickly, cutting search time for procedures and parts. (Goal: answer in <10 seconds.)
Higher confidence: Source-linked answers reduced errors and rework during repairs.
Field productivity: Mobile/web access enabled technicians to resolve issues without desktop context-switching.

Tangible Business Outcomes:

Reduced Mean Time to Repair (MTTR): Less manual searching across lengthy PDFs.
Fewer “can’t find it” escalations: Measurable drop in search-failure tickets.
Safer operations: Prominent warnings and cautions surfaced at the moment of need.
Consistent procedures: Standardized answers drawn from approved manuals.

Technologies Used

Azure AI Foundry, Document Intelligence, Azure OpenAI, Azure AI Search, Vector Store
Azure Container Apps, Azure-managed identity, encryption at rest
Simple mobile/web UI, with optional Bot Framework WebChat for rapid MVP

What’s Next

Image-based guidance extraction for visual procedures.
Voice interface for hands-free operation in the field.
Diagram understanding to parse multi-modal schematics.
Parts-ordering integration to streamline repair close-out.

Contact Optimus to learn how we can help you leverage Agentic AI & Cloud services.