Documentation, training and making life easier

Documentation is crucial to efficient operations. Employers and managers need to make tasks simple and reasonable for the average employee to accomplish. Note: If you are in pharma or semiconductors, you can probably skip this post!

Normal practices

At a bare minimum, plants often have outdated drawings, manuals and SOPs. These may be printed or on a flash drive. It is the bare minimum. I wish a logbook were in this category!

Drawings- If your team has to service it, it should have a drawing. This way, one person has to reverse engineer it one time. Normal sites have people reverse engineering systems each time something fails. Each time it is reverse engineered, someone could simply sketch it and bring it back to the office. Have someone draft it! This could be you on a rainy day, your local engineering firm or a freelancer on Upwork.

Manuals- All of your equipment should have the manual printed and in the office. Our sites typically have document libraries in them. Additionally, new equipment panels installed should have the manuals printed and highlighted inside.

Standard Operating Procedures- SOPs are written to explain the steps to do critical tasks. These are generally official and need management's approval to be modified and may be written to different levels of detail.

Better practices

Logbook- Use the margin to note the date, then mark up what you did and sign "220721 / 0800 Completed bearing PM on blower 1 NES" is a valid and useful entry. The logbook can be a $0.50 composition notebook you bought from Dollar Tree. Getting a fancy one does not make it better- only the substance will!

In-person training- All sites have some amount of in-person training. My current employer has weekly meetings for each plant. One of these plants embeds technical lectures into each on meeting. These are 30-45 minutes and his site is fabulous! His staff are all well trained and his team often ranks in the national competitions.

Best practices

Internal Operating Procedures- IOPs are like SOPs, but, as they are unofficial, can be used for less important task. This could be as simple as a check-list with a title.

IOP: Purchaseing

Applicable when: Value exceeds $10,000. If you have to buy X

1. Specify system requirement

2. Get quote from three vendors

   1. If three are not available, fill out form ABC

3. Fill out form XYZ

4. Check tax-exemptions

5. Check with legal

6. Purchase

If saves people from forgetting simple issues, directs them to the proper forms and will save you a few days of waiting if there are only two vendors.

I prioritize writing IOPs for tasks as follows...

1. Tasks that are rare but crucial to operations

2. Tasks that I know others will have to do soon

3. Things some do well and others struggle with. If you can make things consistently better and less variable, you can make your whole team look better

4. All others

You can make these more flexible, but I still recommend making them consistent in format.

On-demand video training: This requires buy-in from upper management, but it really helps the youngest employees the most. Video training allows them to see and hear the equipment before they get on-site. We started recording the start-up training for our equipment and our guys regularly review them on their phones and laptops. This way, people who are off-shift are still able to learn.

You can do this via YouTube and a private channel. Buy a camcorder, a stand and a microphone (clip on or directional). Record yourself. Edit with OBS Studio and OpenShot. Both are really easy to get started with.

If you work at a large enough firm (>50 people), I recommend Dozuki. Implementing it is my dream. You can track who takes what, limit them by job, etc.

Training and documentation are investments in your firm.

Just like going to the gym helps your future well-being, a well-trained staff will create less emergencies and respond to the few that crop up better. You do not get fit by going to the gym once for eight hours, you do it by going regularly, especially when you do not want to.

Conclusion

If you have an extra hour at the end of your shift, take some pictures and start writing something up. See how much time you can save yourself!