There should be no room for interpretation. Work instructions should make crystal clear how employees perform their tasks. This is also referred to as “Standard Work” within Lean: What does a good instruction look like? This only refers to time-saving – we haven’t even mentioned the value of avoiding errors and rework. The point is that your initial investment in time is paid back once your work instruction has been used just three times. The chart below shows Gluu’s own research on the Return on Investment when writing work instructions. Having clear work instructions minimises this problem. But if this happens often it can have an impact on staff morale. When things go wrong the tendency is to blame or hold people responsible, which is natural. Avoid errors and “the blame game”Ĭlarity avoids errors. They reduce risk because the safest way of doing a job is clear and known by the people that matter.
#Listaway instructions how to#
And knowledge about how to most efficiently perform a task is lost when said employee leaves the company and takes the knowledge with them. When “how things are done” are passed on verbally, there is room for interpretation and human error. Work instructions, or SOPs, build and preserve the knowledge inside a company. (Oh, one more thing: For clarity on all the BPM lingo see our BPM Glossary) Why are Standard Operating Procedures important? They reduce the impact when key people leave With this clarity let’s move on to the topic of how to write work instructions. Your work instruction should therefore be part of an overall process improvement plan. A work instruction – or work guide, job aid or standard operating procedure – describes in detail how an activity within a process (or procedure) is performed.In Gluu we combine process and procedure into a single, simple format (since people confuse them all the time).
A procedure outlines how to perform a process – sequence and who does what.(Interested? read our Guide to simple process mapping) A process is a chain of activities that transform inputs to outputs.(For more on this read our Guide to creating process hierarchies) A process hierarchy shows your overall process architecture and how it supports your business.
Let’s quickly look at where work instructions fit into our overall process documentation levels: What’s important is that work instructions should not be confused with processes or process maps. They’re like the step-by-step instructions we receive when we learn to drive a car: check gear stick is in neutral, start ignition, press clutch, change to first gear and so forth. In any case, the purpose of the work instructions is to clearly explain how a particular work task is performed. Work instructions are also called work guides, Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs), job aids or user manuals, depending on the situation. Video can’t be loaded because JavaScript is disabled: Work Instructions or SOPs – Why They Help () (we hope this video can arm you with good arguments to why this area is important.) What’s the difference between work instructions, work guides, SOPs and so on?
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