Monthly Archives: April 2012

With the foundation provided in the introduction, descriptions of equipment and controls, and the set-up steps, the learner is prepared for the actual productive operation of the equipment. In my experience, the operation of the equipment is a surprisingly short … Continue reading →

We have pushed our learner deeper and deeper into the pool; he or she is now waist deep and ready to try some swimming (dog-paddling, maybe). The remaining sections of the procedure will focus on the activities that must be … Continue reading →

The next part of the procedure provides a pivot point in the discussion. With our learner about knee-deep in the learning experience, we will now discuss the equipment controls. With the background established from the description of components, we will … Continue reading →

Sorry for the digression in the last post, but I wanted to attempt to explain why the “1.0 Scope, 2.0 Applicability, etc.” format gets in the way of a procedure achieving its purpose. So back to the procedure structure. The … Continue reading →

A lot of people writing procedures will already be crying “foul” over my structure, even though I have only discussed the Introduction section. Many well-intentioned people will say, “This is how a procedure must be structured: I. Scope II. Applicability … Continue reading →

The procedure introduction is important, if for no other reason than it is the reader’s first contact with the subject matter. The purpose of the procedure is to set boundaries around the procedure content. If I indicate in the first … Continue reading →

The structure of procedures–now the structure of manuals–that I settled on is based largely on OSHA’s Process Safety Management (PSM) Standard (29 CFR 1910.119). The purpose behind Process Safety Management is to ensure that persons performing particularly hazardous processes (like … Continue reading →

In developing a manual for a piece of large capital equipment, the outcome of the manual is that training of users of the equipment would be effective,  that ultimately the user organization would achieve its purpose for the equipment purchase. … Continue reading →

The foundation of the product manual, as discussed Monday, is the list of activities (which we are calling “tasks” in this context) that must be performed by someone in the user organization or the product will not meet its objective. … Continue reading →

I left the last post describing a customer manual as a training program, with the piece of equipment representing a “department.” So the question becomes, “what are the tasks that must be performed to keep the machine running and producing?” … Continue reading →