Myth – digital work instructions are difficult to create, update and manage

No need for getting cold feets.

Spoiler alert: it’s even more simple than you thought

No doubt, work instructions guarantee knowledge capturing, digital work instructions are as much about guiding operators providing step-by-step information, as they are about easy and lean documentation of processes. Quite often the question raises how difficult or time consuming it is to translate spreadsheets, paper files into a straightforward digital set of instructions, especially for heavier and long cycle processes. Well, here is some good news. Ansomatic’s user interface allows anybody to design, build and change a work instruction.

It’s like going to the McDonalds and ordering a meal through a service kiosk. Thanks to McDonalds well designed User Interface (UI) you exactly know how to order your personal meal without punishing your brains. Self-serviceability is primordial for digital technologies to remain for the long run. As your process will change due to changing set-ups, new insights from continuous improvement projects, you don’t want your instructions (and so workstations) to be rigid, inflexible and tough to manage. Besides, people easily drop-out if it takes too long to master new systems.

There is a big difference between what you think users do and what they actually do. 

Ansomatic’s development priority was to get users hooked to its design through a simple and meaningful user experience. For a long time, Ansomatic has been co-developed and tested with operators and engineers from various production companies encompassing the interactions engineer and operators want to make while setting up a process.  

Configure, not program

When one thinks about implementing a new software platform, the hair often stands on end. And unfortunately, quite often the concerns are fueled by bad experiences, caused by: complex user design, lack of adequate training,  underestimating the learning curve, ..

A straightforward and common design of presenting and managing information is a table. Ansomatic’s configurator has a table based structure composed of columns and rows.

  • Each column represent a function like: step description, instruction type (eg. Fastening, visual,…)
  • each row represents a step in a process.
digital work instructions

Benefits

  • Lower TCO as user can easily take ownership over their process without supplier intervention
  • Continuous improvement blossoms when every team member takes ownership of the process and makes it their own. Engineers and operators can easily take control of workflow definitions and are assured changes get implemented faster.
  • As a result, standardization and consistency in terms of knowledge capture and process creation was never so easy to achieve.
  • Enhanced agility and scalability. Ansomatic stores all instructions in a central library and gives the flexibility to easily duplicate, copy paste or finetune models according to process variations.

Want to experience it yourself?Â