How to Build Work Instruction Templates for Manufacturing

Work instruction templates enable companies to share knowledge faster with their workforce. With an intelligent standardized method, companies can speed up and optimize how they initiate and maintain their standardized processes.

In a nutshell, work instruction templates empower manufacturers to standardize how they standardize.

The subject of standardizing your standardization methods may seem a little out there, but it is an incredibly worthwhile venture. If your manufacturing work instructions are hard to implement, maintain, and continuously improve, then how effective can they be?

Since work instructions are a long-term strategy, you need smart and effective methods. Work instruction templates for manufacturing are a major aid in this endeavor. The right templates enable companies to achieve standardization across all their operations consistently. But the wrong work instructions and the wrong templates can be more trouble than they're worth.

With this in mind, let’s explore the capabilities of work instructions and their templates to find the right solution for your business.

The Benefits of Digital Work Instructions & Templates for Manufacturing

Work instructions are a powerhouse when it comes to paperless standardization within manufacturing. Instead of giving employees a binder full of instructions that degrade over time, companies can provide their employees with digital instructions that possess many benefits.

• Degradation proof: While binder and sop booklets are prone to get lost or damaged, digital work instructions last forever and are automatically distributed to all qualified employees.
• Easy to update: When you improve a process, employees have access to the new instruction immediately.
• Complete version history: Track every improvement with a complete history of all past processes.
• Accurate visual guidance: Guide workers through the process with visual step-by-step guides that give the whole picture and convey the exact methods needed to complete the job.
• Centralized data: Work instructions create a singular source of information, empowering employees to gather and access data, something a static binder could never do.

But the question remains: How do we optimize creating and updating these digital instructions? The answer is quite simple: Work instruction templates for manufacturing

Work instruction templates enable companies to optimize their standardization methods with the following solutions.

• Kickstart standardization methods
• Decrease work instruction creation times
• Update hundreds of instructions simultaneously
• Share complex knowledge quickly and effectively with the workforce.
• Ensure that all standardized methods are standardized no matter who is building the instructions

With this list of capabilities, it's no wonder why companies in need of standardization are looking to implement work instruction templates.

But how do you know which templates will suit your business?

Not all Work Instruction Templates for Manufacturing Are Equal

First and foremost, standardization is good at any level. It enables businesses to identify and share their best practices with the workforce and achieve higher levels of quality with every process. And using a set of templates can help kick-start how you document your procedures.

However, not all work instructions are set up for long-term success.

While a quick Google search will show you several standardization methods and supposedly free options, each one may not be what your unique operation needs. Even fewer have intelligent methods to create templates that fit the manufacturing industry.

Similarly, companies can opt to use Word, PowerPoint, or a series of PDFs to standardize their methods, but often their efforts fall flat. Without a purpose-built system that allows you to get the most out of your templates, workers and supervisors can grow tired of a system and method that’s hard to understand and even harder to update.

To make your work instruction templates as effective as possible, they need to meet your organization's exact needs, ensuring that workers can easily follow them and authors can quickly create and update them.

How to Build Work Instruction Templates for Manufacturing: 4 Core Elements

So how do you choose the right work instructions? And how can you optimize your templates for the manufacturing environment?

When looking at work instruction templates, it is useful to look at them from two perspectives.

• How easily can workers understand the process instructions?
• How quickly can authors create and update the instructions?

The best work instruction templates and platforms possess 4 core elements that enable businesses to optimize how workers receive knowledge and how authors create/update them.

1. Focus on the Design & Function of Your Manufacturing Templates

The first element of a good work instruction template is design. Workers need a comprehensive design that directs their eyes to crucial elements of the work instruction. For this reason, visual elements and cues within your work instruction templates should be systematically placed near the center and take up most of the screen. Any additional information that is not directly crucial to the process should be placed on the side.

Workers can easily access and view the information at any time, but it doesn’t steal attention away from the main process.

Our work instruction software takes care of the design for you. With a proven design built by manufacturers and used by companies all over the world, VKS provides your workers with an easy and comprehensible layout while also allowing authors to create and add interactive elements.

Users can toggle between different viewing modes to suit the process and their needs. If the goal is to focus on a specific procedure, users can augment the design and toggle Distraction Free Mode. On the other hand, if users want to maintain a view of their performance and/or track their placement within the instructions, VKS can display the thumbnails and expand the info panel.

2. Use Work Instruction Templates to Create Multiple Processes

What happens if you have many similar manufacturing processes? Instead of starting every new process from scratch, use templates to build multiple similar instructions quickly.

Using VKS, you can create one basic work instruction that has your required structure along with the preliminary safety measures and standard operating procedures (SOPs). You can then use this work instruction template as a foundation for all similar processes while tailoring each VKS guidebook to suit the specific product and/or process.

Duplicating work instruction templates easily cuts your work instruction creation and updating times in half, or more.

Work instruction authors only need to fill in the gaps to create new processes. All key measures, process sequence order, and company best practices are already within the work instructions. This includes all smart forms, alerts, and rule engines.

Additionally, since the template is stored within one accessible system and possesses a full version history, keeping track of your original templates and their changes is quick and reliable.

3. Embed Work Instruction Templates to Instantly Update Countless Key Procedures

Work instruction templates can also be used to embed specific practices into any work instruction, making their utilization a powerhouse for continuous improvement. Companies can update and improve one template and have it automatically applied to all associated guidebooks.

Embedded guidebooks are the next level of work instruction templates for manufacturing, facilitating faster and easier continuous improvement.

Here’s how it works.

Within any company procedure, there are specific guidelines, SOPs, and safety procedures that need to be followed every time. Using VKS embedded guidebooks, authors can embed pre-established practices at any point within a work instruction. This means they don’t have to re-create safety measures or SOPs every time they make a new guidebook.

However, these specific guidelines need to be updated from time to time. And here’s the amazing part.

When these safety measures and SOPs are improved, they are automatically updated in all guidebooks that use these embedded procedures. This intelligent process allows companies to improve all their work instructions by only adjusting one file.

Use Case: Update Hundreds of Instructions with One Embedded Guidebook

For example, imagine that you manage an assembly department that is currently assembling seats for long-distance trucks, locomotives, and lawnmowers. You’ve established over 200 separate guidebooks for your line of seats. While each product is different, each process has similar core procedures such as safety measures and general SOPs.

Recently, you and your team have discovered a faster and safer method to attach the pneumatic components to the base of the seat. This new process is proposed to increase quality and speed up production.

Now, all you need to do is update your guidebooks with the new process. In the past, companies would have to manually find all 200 work instructions and update them individually. Often companies would miss out on the improvement because updating the instructions was just too big a job.

But thankfully, you’re using VKS embedded guidebooks, enabling you to isolate and update the core process across all guidebooks. Once the change has been made, all 200 affected guidebooks are automatically updated with the new process, saving your team weeks of work.

4. Leverage Digital Elements like Shared Smart Forms, Rules, & Pictograms

Similar to the embedded guidebooks, VKS work instructions also allow users to create templates of interactive and informative elements within their work instruction guidebooks. This allows for a great deal of diversity, flexibility, and control when implementing a work instructions template methodology.

• Smart Forms: VKS Smart Forms enable companies to collect process data directly from the shop floor. The smart forms can be filled in manually or autonomously based on your required setup.
• Rule Engine: Based on specific conditions and actions, the VKS Rule Engine enables companies to apply automated processes based on in-the-moment data entered into the smart from.
• Pictograms: These visual cues help workers and authors quickly convey information such as PPE requirements and safety reminders.

Organizations can create a set of smart forms, rules, and pictogram templates and apply them to multiple guidebooks. When these elements are updated with new fields and information, all associated elements within multiple instructions are also updated instantaneously.

This level of variability and control within work instruction templates for manufacturing allows companies to push the boundaries of modern manufacturing, paving the way for standardized and intelligent continuous improvement methods.

How Will You Use Your Work Instruction Templates for Manufacturing?

Work instruction templates are a key tool that allows companies to kickstart and optimize their standardization methods. With the right work instructions template solution, process knowledge is shared faster and improvements are rolled out sooner.

VKS offers an extensive system to make standardization simple yet powerful.

Backed by over 50 years of manufacturing experience, VKS work instruction software is made by manufacturers for the manufacturing environment. Our work instructions template system enables companies to get the most out of their standardization efforts while also expediting the process.