Tips and Insights

We've been creating visual work instructions for several years, but obtaining metrics regarding the impact they have on a company's bottom line has proven difficult. Typically, we're called in to help at the same time a company is implementing several Lean/quality initiatives. That makes it hard to figure out what percentage of the resulting improvement is due to effective work instructions alone.

The notion of giving an operator what she needs, when she needs it, in a way she can use it (visually), seems like a commonsense approach, but it's surprising how many text-heavy, confusing, unfriendly documents we see. I have to assume that's because companies haven't seen or can't imagine the impact effective work instructions can have on their metrics; therefore, I want to share statistics from two companies we worked with where we definitively captured the results.

We created visual work instructions for an international company that develops medical devices—a highly regulated environment. The procedures were complex and the workers inexperienced. The devices were intricate and expensive, allowing for only minute deviations and making quality imperative. Though we were part of an overall Lean initiative, the company was able to determine the impact our instructions had on three metrics:

• Yields increased 8%
• Deviations per lot decreased 83%
• Training development time decreased 50%

Another company, an automotive parts manufacturing plant, asked us to help define standard best practice and create work instructions for all their operations. We created documents—laminated, easy-to-see posters—that they displayed on the shop floor. These were used to reinforce the training that had been done with the same work instructions. Our documents impacted the company's results in two ways:

• Reduced secondary inspections and eliminated tertiary inspections
• Reduced scrap by 50%

It may be hard to determine what share of the credit visual work instructions can claim, but it is worth measuring. We do know, based on the numbers above as well as shared anecdotes from clients, that the potential savings far exceed the cost of developing these instructions.

For many clients, the affirmation comes immediately. After speaking to a room of engineers and supervisors during a recent sales presentation where we showed before and after examples of work instructions, one of the engineers voiced what many thought: "Holy cow, if you can't see the benefits of visual by just looking at the differences . . ."

I'll let you finish the sentence.

Labels: Lean, metrics, quality, standard best practice, user's needs, visual work instructions

Even though what something is called doesn't change what something is (you remember Shakespeare's "a rose by any other name . . ."), when semantics creep into an industry, it can cause problems. I generated this list of possible terms for identifying work instructions in just a couple of minutes (and missed how many more?):

• work instructions
  
• standard operating procedures
• job aids
• standardized work instructions
• job planning
• product design documents
• technical manuals
• user instructions
• procedure manuals
• policy manuals
• job skills
• training tools
• detailed process sheets

Isn't communication hard enough, without having different words mean the same thing? I'm laughing, of course, because we are talking about the English language here, where multiple meanings, multiple pronunciations, multiple spellings is the bane of meaningful conversation.

I don't think using different terms for an object or a process is necessarily a Lean or quality issue when it happens between different companies, but it could be an issue if it's happening within the company and hindering communication between departments. Take, for instance, the engineering department and the shop floor. If engineering is in charge of writing instructions—and they often are—they may use terms for parts that don't match what the shop floor technicians and mechanics call them. And if the engineer and the user don't agree (or confer ahead of time) before naming the parts, the potential for confusion when reading the instruction rises; i.e., if a worker wants to find out how to fix the thingamajig on the hoosit, she's in trouble if the engineer has named it the wallabaloo on the cratshis. She won't find what she needs unless she looks through the entire manual.

We were exposed to this issue when we worked with the United States Postal Services maintenance department. Barcode label printers at bulk mail centers are high-speed, high-volume machines that can disrupt an entire station if they go down. USPS maintenance, which handles dozens of machines and infrequently works on these printers, needed to diagnose and fix them quickly. Not only did they have to read through the columns of text in the table of contents to figure out what procedure they might need, they also had to figure out which term matched the part they needed to repair.

We solved this problem with a visual table of contents that allowed maintenance to identify the part based on what it looked like and/or where it was located on the machine. The user could then turn to the page of the operation that applied to it.

To understand the aliteracy pervading American society, I think we have to differentiate between two types. Yes, we do have functional aliterates—people who won't read, who haven't felt the thrill when they discover something about the world or themselves in a story, essay or memoir. In the classroom, teachers are trying to ignite interest in reading, asking their students for introspection, reflection, new thoughts and strategies. Though that process is muddy and unclear, teachers know that if their students wade through text to learning, understanding and innovation, they'll be hooked.

In the business world we're talking about a different kind of aliteracy called conditional aliteracy. I wrote about it in an earlier blog. It's the kind of aliteracy that can happen to any of us, even the best readers. It's the aliteracy that comes with the challenges of the job, when people are under pressure, under time constraints or under attack—literally or figuratively. These workers can't read, even though in normal situations they're perfectly capable and willing.

And while many businesses hope to elicit introspection—and often demand innovation—from their workers, that can't happen until workers understand what they have to do and feel at ease with the process. For instance, let's take an employee who has to change 10 bolts each day during line changeovers. If her job performance is rated on speed, if she's new to the process, if English is a second language, she may be confused, frantic and frustrated. Quality will suffer.

If, however, that employee has been trained to the one best practice and has access to procedural documents that don't demand deciphering, she can learn that job as well as other jobs, moving between processes and giving the company more flexibility with their personnel and product scheduling. This exposure and training also allows her to be thoughtful and critical of the processes, increasing the likelihood that she'll identify ways to improve them. Again, using our simple example, she may determine that changing a bolt by hand rather than using an impact wrench can save her three minutes, and because she has to make 15 changeovers a day, the company can save hours in a week.

Encouraging employees to remain attentive and enabling them to make change allows for this type of innovation. Here at Explainers, we advocate for those users. We want to make the procedures so straightforward that users remain free of frustration, anger, or cynicism. That means our document has to be credible, consistent, clear, and accessible. If it's missing any of those attributes, it becomes ineffective.

Because the guiding principle for us is the user's needs, a work instruction can look very different when we explain it. For example, the original directions for cleaning the water tank of this ultrasonic cleaner were conventional—outlined steps written in numeric order with the occasional photo added. By using line art, we were able to show, without any text, that the operator would need to unplug the unit, scoop out the water while wearing gloves, and document the information on a form.

Our goal is to orient the operator quickly, so that she can look at that page and know immediately what she has to do. It's not that we're against reading, it's that we want her to understand what she needs to do. It just so happens that most processes we explain are more effective when shown rather than written.

I believe lots of people still read books, and I'd like to think that E. M. Forster's speculation is wrong. He said, "It is a mistake to think that books have come to stay. The human race did without them for thousands of years and may decide to do without them again." I think teachers will convince future generations of the benefits of reading and help those who won't read "get" it. They will instill the benefits of reading to their students, sharing the aesthetic pleasures that come with reflection, the brain surge that results from learning something through words.

And while teachers are taking care of functional aliteracy, companies will win against conditional aliteracy. As they move toward or continue their quest for quality standards and lean operations, they'll create conditions that support their employees, allowing those employees to be thoughtful, efficient workers who positively affect the bottom line.

Labels: aliteracy, conditional aliteracy, functional aliteracy, quality, user's needs, visual work instructions