The Benefit of Instruction

Are you experiencing slowdowns in production? Do your cycle times vary depending on shift? Are you experiencing quality issues? Have you tried to improve a process with no success? Are you concerned about the effectiveness of training and on-boarding practices?

If you answered yes to any of these questions, job instructions and work instructions can help. Job instructions and work instructions are two different methods used to guide the work necessary to provide a product or service the customer wants, when the customer wants it. But how? Job instructions and work instructions identify accepted best practices and document them in a way that is easy to understand, and allows your team to successfully complete a task using the instruction.

Some of the many benefits generated by job instructions and work instructions include providing a tool for properly training new and existing employees, eliminating shortcuts, and overlooking details that may be second nature to some. As trainees prove an understanding of their responsibilities and begin to work on their own, job instructions and work instructions continue to provide benefit by serving as a reference guide for questions that arise during day-to-day operation and serving as a tool for problem solving on the plant floor, allowing the root cause to quickly be identified and addressed.

Job instructions and work instructions also provide the foundation for continuous improvement activities by minimizing variation and establishing repeatability in a task that can be reviewed for improvement opportunities. To learn more about the differences between job instructions and work instructions, which one is right for you, and how the WVU-IE/MEP can help you realize the benefits these documents generate, contact David Carrick at 412.327.9119.