Industrial Mind Music

Work instructions have been around for at least a century and probably a lot longer. Frederick Taylor and Frank Gilbreth popularized them as a means to implement the “one best way” to do any task. While they can be written in a myriad of ways, they generally include a procedural guide:

1. Introduction.
2. Steps in procedure:
   1. Step 1
   2. Step 2
   3. …
   4. End
3. Test
4. Release and repeat

At iPOV, we tend to see these documents as the “sheet music” of routine industrial activity. They make the tasks definable, repeatable, and capable of controlled change.

But how are these procedures understood? Can the reader relate them to
the task at hand or do they have to spend time puzzling over them? Or worse, being afraid to follow them?

Link to download pdf version of document.

How do you show the

rhythm

of the task?

The whole point of this instruction is to do this task much faster than most people believe possible. To achieve that speed requires two things:

1. You must do the correct steps
2. You must do them at a fast, smooth rhythm

The inherent rhythm is a critical part of the expertise. In fact, achieving a smooth rhythm is how you know that you are good at the task. So how can you learn rhythm from a written work instruction? That’s hard.

A short video clip, however, gives a clear and compelling sense of the correct rhythm. When a worker can do the task with a similarly fast, fluid motion, they know they are qualified for the task. This is the same confidence they will get with OJT from an expert. Except the video doesn’t draw wages. (credit: the text portion of the worksheet was developed by Bryan Lund at the Training Within Industry Blog)

How do you know how hard to push?

The human brain is a marvelous estimator of physical actions. When you watch the technician push the ribbon on with two fingers and see that the tendons in the back of his hand barely quiver, your brain automatically judges how much force he is using. Most people can almost ‘feel’ the amount of pressure that he is exerting. Only two things could accurately convey that knowledge: doing it yourself and, as a minimal substitute, a movie like this.

There are physical tasks throughout industry that contain similar elements. Watching safety demonstrations for lifting or washing will reveal the same valuable, subtle physical clues. Clues that will only be available from a live demonstration or a video clip like this.

How do you show things that can’t be seen?

A camera can go places that are too difficult or dangerous or complicated for the human viewer. You can make a drawing of these places, but you can’t watch things happen. A camera can also go places and see things that hard for the brain to directly comprehend:

• It can make fast events visible with slow motion
• It can make slow things less tedious with time-lapse
• It can see things that are really small or really large
• It can view action from several angles simultaneously
• It can see where there is very little light
• It can go where a human would not dare
• etc.

You can try to write text and graphic descriptions of these phenomena – but to what end? They will tax the imagination of the reader. You can create computer simulations, but how much will it cost and how long will it take? A little bit of inexpensive camera work may do just as well and will be far more believable.

How do you demonstrate artistry?

As technology invades more and more of our professional tasks, it brings a level of complexity and sophistication that is very difficult to explain. In todays’ offices, for example, skill at PowerPoint is nearly as essential as skill with a file was for early manufacturing workers. Except that PowerPoint skills are more varied and difficult to describe.

This example from YouTube shows how to create a glassy sphere in Photoshop. That is almost a basic skill for budding web designers. Yet it is totally beyond the ability of text and graphics to describe. Imagine a printed work instruction like the ones at the top of this article. It would be ridiculous.

The movie at left, while a bit amateurish, is perfectly clear, straightforward and effective. The required actions are shown, together with the vocalized thoughts of the artist. You quickly understand what you need to do and why you need to do it.