I just received my copy of the SME e-Newsletter of Lean Manufacturing called Lean Directions which had an outstanding article on Visual Work Instructions. Most of the time, articles I read on lean are long on fluff and short on substance. This article has some excellent detailed points aimed at the lean practitioner.
Check out Dr. Steven Blackwell's article "Shorter Text for Visual Work Instructions". It follows the same concepts I have written about on making documents shorter, concise and to the point to improve use and understanding (ref posts "Visual Work Instructions Basics" and "When it Comes to Standard Work Instruction Computer Files, Size Matters" and "Make Every Word Count in Quality").
Great guidelines to create better visual work instructions like sentence structure and making it simple!
While at this site, just sign up for a free subscription to SME's Lean Directions. It's a great Lean Resource.
2 comments:
Thank you. I forwarded the article to a friend who has been dealing with this struggle. I was struck by two other things: 1)Someone else sent me to the same issue yesterday to read about why there aren't more Lean successes, and 2)there is a great deal of similarity between this syntax and the syntax suggested by Joe Ely last week in his Easy Kaizen blog of Wednesday. The tie to all of this is that we need to think things through, gain insight, and use simple written words to communicate. The same rules serve in journalism, politics, religion, etc.
In our company our work instructions are text, text, text, plastic covers and dust. Only time finger prints appear are at audit time. We also have training sheets in addition to w/i, and they don't collect as much dust because they are in a drawer.
Thank you for passing on Dr Blackwell's article, it will help in our struggle for change.
Post a Comment