Digital Work Instruction Solutions - Engineering Industries eXcellence

What are Digital Work Instructions?

Digital Work Instructions refer to computerized visual tools to instruct shop floor workers to perform their jobs. Unlike paper-based work instructions, Digital Work Instructions may also include 3D models of the parts to be assembled, information about the tools as well as Product and Manufacturing Information (PMI). In addition, Digital Work Instructions may be interactive, allowing the reader to manipulate the 3D view, play animated assembly sequences as well as browse through a sequential list of steps to be performed per job order. Detailed, highly visual and up-to-date work instructions can improve product quality, reduce rework and save time. The ability to manage work instruction documents per product configuration also provides significant benefits, not only for the initial generation of work instructions but also for the flexibility to manage changes quickly. While authoring of the initial work instructions may require some effort, being able to manage engineering changes and automatically reconcile them into the manufacturing structure is the most time-consuming task in manufacturing planning.

A Few Use Cases: Why Do Companies Need Digital Work Instructions?

Aerospace, Space & Defense manufacturers must follow very specific quality standards. Digital Work Instructions will support adherence to quality targets by getting the latest information to the shop floor, reducing rework and facilitating communication between multiple departments during change processes. Many aerospace manufacturers have home-grown systems that are not integrated with their design and production data management systems. In this case, Engineering offers an application that is fully integrated with the central database, which manages both engineering and manufacturing data and directly correlates out to the shop floor.
Automotive & Heavy Machinery manufacturing is an industry with a very large production scale. In addition, in this sector, development and production workflows do not typically come together until late in the design process and sometimes not until the manufacturing stage. When done manually or on paper, this process leads to the execution of work instructions that are outdated, incomplete, insufficiently detailed, etc. The incorporation of Digital Work Instructions into documentation creation not only makes the process easier and faster, but enables manufacturers to provide complete, thorough, visually-enhanced work instructions with the appropriate sequence of operations and functionalities to the shop floor.

Features of Solutions for Digital Work Instructions

Clean, simple, mobile-friendly user experience
Configurable user interface themes
Immediate updating of change information from engineering to manufacturing
Full-text search of database for files and file contents
Step-by-step Bill of Process (manufacturing BOP or mBOP)
Automatic creation of work instructions based on mBOP and build plans including images, shop notes and/or design mark-ups
Automatic sharing of work instructions with shop floor operators via integration to MES
Tools to add enhancements such as 3D animations and graphics
Part and tool lists available per operation
Operators can digitally submit issues, problem reports and change requests to engineering
Visualization of large and complex 3D product data without any installation to shop floor
End users can visualize and manipulate data within simple navigation windows

Benefits of Solutions for Digital Work Instructions

Ensure latest information is provided to shop floor, enhancing product quality, lessening rework and saving time
Support collaboration between engineering and manufacturing
Facilitate change management
Streamline communication to the plant floor
Promote paperless manufacturing
Improve plant-level workforce performance and increase throughput
Improve quality of production and end product

Engineering’s Expertise

The Engineering Industries eXcellence team has worked on many successful implementations of Digital Work Instructions solutions for manufacturing customers across a number of different industries. Overall, the impact of the solution is significant. Thanks to Digital Work Instructions, customers are able to invest considerably less time in the creation of work instructions, while designing significantly higher quality content at the same time. Digital Work Instructions ensure that a consistent process execution format is used across the enterprise, and one that is easily adopted, accepted and utilized by operators at the plant floor level. When integrated within a complete PLM to MES environment, the solution also ensures consistent quality of product and process, since any changes in design or planning are automatically updated in the work instructions available on the shop floor. Change management processes are also greatly improved, since communication between engineering, manufacturing and the shop floor has become automatic and streamlined.