It used to take a lot of time and energy for factories to set up clear work instructions for every product and process, and even more so to keep them up-to-date in a consistent way. But if you take a good approach, your employees will deliver better quality in less time with less stress and making work instructions will be net positive!
Better quality and safety, fewer production errors, employees who are trained faster, better installation of comparable products and ultimately lower costs. Those are the benefits of good, lean work instructions. Yet, we see in practice that Standard Operating Procedures (SOP’s) and work instructions are often not drawn up correctly. Often they are on paper, too vague, unclear, they contain errors or they are not up-to-date. How can you, as a company, do it better?!
Analyze assembly processes
Addax Motors produces a 100% electric, green, compact, agile, and pleasantly silent vehicle. The vehicles are available with open or closed cargo box and many more options, custom developed for last mile delivery, amusement parks, warehouse logistics, cities and municipalities.
The company chose to work with Azumuta. Before Azumuta there was a manual with some instructions and a lot of the knowledge was hidden in experienced operators. With Azumuta, a first detailed version of the complete car was documented within one week. Since then the instructions are increasing in detail and precision, without getting bloated. Various guidelines were composed with instructions and accompanying images.
Simple, but no limits
A remote screen with work instructions was installed on each workstation. This way, every operator can observe the correct instructions for each specific type of product. To get the detailed instructions for a specific car, they scan the barcode of the product. Since Addax Motors has different options on their vehicles, these variants are also automatically switched on or off. In this way it is almost impossible for the operator to make mistakes. Photos or videos with comments, notes and text will appear. This allows the operator to visually observe what exactly needs to be done.
Following steps and viewing photos with instructions was one thing. But sometimes an operator is obligated to go through a check (eg. for quality control, or to log information). Azumuta offers a different solution for this. In addition, it contains checklists that operators must go through before they can proceed to the next step. What if there's a new product or component where employees first need a training before starting? No problem. Easily provide digital training with checks, questionnaires, measured values or other complex flows. (they can even integrated to communicate to existing tools, eg. torque tools)
The challenge is to let the entire production floor work together quickly and easily. Preferably by using a comprehensive platform. Performing an audit, reporting a problem, following a work instruction and being able to report on it must be possible in a few seconds. This helps companies make their factory future-proof.
Do your work instructions work?
Will you be able to evaluate product changes or new issues based on existing work instructions in a way that your entire process forms one complete whole? Then your guidelines will be seen as successful.
You can always contact one of Azumuta’s specialists directly via our website. They will be happy to help you migrate your paper-based work instructions to our digital platform. Go for an industry 4.0 work instructions platform that helps.
