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I'm about to write a technical description for an industrial process. The description will follow logical blocks, or blocks from the PFD of the process. This a sales document aimed at (mostly) engineers. My idea is to have a short paragraph at the start of every chapter, that will explain the purpose of the block to be described and notable inputs and outputs. My thinking is that the document will probably not only be read in one sitting, but that someone will come back to it to look up specific things. So I want to help the readers to orient themselves. The only downside I see is that's a little extra text. Should I do this, is there a better way to make my description accessible?
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I think an abstract or quick summary isn't a bad idea at all, especially if your audience is not necessarily familiar with the process or the parts, or if there's a lot of jargon involved.
I may not remember the difference between the Widgetizer and Widget Processing, but if you explain "The Widgetizer is the machine which inserts the ding-dong into the hoo-ha" and "Widget Processing is the process of moving fully interlocked widgets off the assembly line into the shipping boxes," I'll know which chapter I need.
Yes, you should have introductory text for every chapter in a technical work. However, you don't necessarily need to have a dedicated paragraph.
Ideally, you would use the chapter's title to clearly indicate what the chapter is about. And if each chapter describes a step in a process that has distinct inputs and outputs, you may want to include a plainly labeled "Inputs and Outputs" section (or sections) in each chapter.
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