Creating Work Instructions

During the manufacturing process of the bicycle, the shop floor operator requires guidance on performing assembly and inspection steps. For instance, they need instructions on how to position and connect the pedal components, as well as guidance on verifying that quality standards are met. The instructions can be provided in the form of a 3D model of the bicycle or as text.

In SAP Digital Manufacturing, a work instruction is an electronic document that contains instructions, pictures, drawings, or other visualizations. Work instructions demonstrate how to perform a task during a manufacturing process or at a resource. These documents provide important characteristics about the setup, process steps, and expected results at an operation activity. You can use documents from web resources or local servers as work instruction elements. The system ensures that relevant work instructions are available for production operators during execution. 

In the Bike Company, work instructions can be displayed to guide the operator throughout the manufacturing process. When the shop floor operator is assembling the bicycle, a work instruction is displayed to guide on how to assemble the several components. The work instruction has a 3D model of the bicycle and text with safety precautions and the assembly procedure.

You can define if you want to log the time when a user views a work instruction associated with one shop floor control (SFC). This information can be accessed, for example, through the SFC report.

Work instructions are maintained in the Manage Work Instructions application. Each work instruction when defined can have one of the following statuses:

• New: This work instruction doesn't appear in the production operator dashboard (POD). This is a temporary status that is used for instructions that are still in the process of being created.
• Releasable: This work instruction appears in the POD.
• Obsolete: This work instruction doesn't appear in the POD. This work instruction is no longer used.
• Hold: This work instruction doesn't appear in the POD. This status is temporary. When the hold issue is resolved, users can change the status of this record.

Work instruction elements are the content that is displayed to the shop floor operator.

Work instruction elements can be of the following types:

• URL: The work instruction content is only accessible from the Internet.
• Text: The text of the work instruction. You can add your text, along with tables, lists, links, or images, as a work instruction. The rich text editor allows you to modify font styles, text alignment, text color, and other layout and formatting elements.
• File: The uploaded file of the work instruction.
• Header Text: The text of the work instruction appears in the POD header and contains a maximum of 20 characters.
• Local File: The work instruction content from local resources only.
• Streaming: The work instruction content is loaded at runtime by using a streaming service in SAP Enterprise Product Development.

You can define if you want to see the work instruction element in a new window.

You can also define several elements for a work instruction and all of them are available to be displayed to the shop floor operator.

The assignment defines when the work instruction is displayed to the shop floor operator. It can be assigned, for example, to material/version, routing/version, and operation activity master.