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Four Essentials of Effective Work Instructions

Returning the focus to the worker

Patrick Sweeney
Mon, 03/30/2009 - 12:21
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A work instruction is a tool provided to help someone do a job correctly. This simple statement implies that the purpose of the work instruction is quality and that the target user is the worker. Unfortunately, in many workplaces, today’s work instructions have little connection with this fundamental focus. Factories have encumbered work instructions with content that has been added to satisfy auditors, lawyers, engineers, accountants, and yes, even quality managers. We’ve piled on so much extraneous material that we’ve lost sight of the intended purpose of work instructions.

Instead of providing a simple tool to do a job right, we’ve buried the work instruction under a cascade of specifications, contract requirements, revision history, references, controls, licensing provisions, and engineering theory. The person who uses the work instruction has become an afterthought in favor of satisfying a licensing or certifying auditor.

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Comments

Submitted by mikey on Tue, 03/31/2009 - 21:01

work instructions

The ol' picture conveys a thousand words. All true but I find myself writing work instructions to my target users. I find using pictures as the focus and if they can't grasp the picture I slide in the occasional annotation. But if this doesn't work 3 to 4 sentence paragraph underneath the objective picture. you got 3 ways to getting it.

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