5 Reasons Paper and PDF Work Instructions Will Fail You
We’ve included a sample of our step-by-step digital work instructions at the end of this blog post. Make sure to check it out! Stuck in the Past? Let’s face it, traditional paper and PDF work instructions aren’t great. Lengthy, cumbersome, and hard to produce, these…
Here’s How to Write Work Instructions that Save You Billions
Take a minute to imagine your ideal factory floor. What are the workers doing? How are the machines running? Are processes crisp, well-defined, and efficient? We’re betting that the answer is yes. We want our manufacturing processes to be efficient. Why? Cost. It’s simply the…
Feature Update: The Instruction CMS – Better Than Ever
Thanks to your feedback and input, the SwipeGuide Instruction CMS is now user-friendlier than ever. A new improved release will be available for you on Monday, March 4th, 2019. Some of the new goodies for easier creation of your guides are: Better Support of the…
Food Safety and Quality Assurance in Manufacturing
Working in the manufacturing industry represents a never-ending quest for improvement. Your company strives to embrace precision, inspire focus, and meet strict standards of compliance. As the industry changes and grows, more pressure is placed to adopt digital innovations, increase efficiency, and scale all processes…
Knowledge Management for the Field Service Workforce
Introduction. Field Service Engineers (FSE) are technology experts and product ambassadors who maintain the vast networks of technology that drive our industries. It’s essential that they have access to the most up-to-date methods of knowledge management to ensure effective, dynamic solutions in the field, in…
Manufacturing Predictions for 2019 – SwipeGuide CEO Willemijn Schneyder
We Talked with SwipeGuide co-founder and CEO Willemijn Schneyder about what’s next in manufacturing technology. Willemijn, thanks so much for the interview. As we move into 2019, what are you most excited about for SwipeGuide? We’re really excited about what’s happening in the industry today….
Feature update: Instruction Scoring & Feedback.
Gather insights from users instantly on your instructions & procedures. SwipeGuide empowers you to identify pain points and improvements in instructions while letting you build your own feedback campaign with our easy-to-customize templates: measure effort, satisfaction & time. What’s new? Templates: We now provide templates…
Improving Workplace Safety with Better Digital Instructions
Safety Matters. Talk to anyone in the manufacturing industry, and ask them what they prioritize most for their workers on the factory floor. It doesn’t matter if it’s the CEO, an accountant, or a team foreman. Nine times out of ten, they’ll tell you that…
Why Video Doesn’t Work for Instructions
Video: Great Medium, Wrong Application. Users often want to use videos for instructions. It makes sense. Video seems like it would be a fantastic medium for instructional design. Videos are highly visual and they allow an expert to explain all the aspects and nuances of…
Digitalization and Smart Factories: Manufacturing Trends for 2019
Change is in the air. 2018 was an incredible year for innovation in the manufacturing industry. Countless new manufacturing trends have revolutionized the factory floor. Smarter, faster, and more efficient processes mean that work can be done at an unprecedented rate. In 2019, digitalization will…
The Role of Instructions in Digital Transformation & IIoT.
What does the Shop Floor of the Future look like? The term “Industrial Internet of Things” (IIoT) is used to describe the technologies that enhance manufacturing and industrial processes with the help of machine learning and big data to analyze sensor data and machine-to-machine (M2M)…
What to Consider When Looking for Instructional Software
Today’s fast-changing world sets an unstable environment for organizations to operate in. Therefore, organizations need to continuously adapt to external factors while keeping a focus on organizational goals through clear organizational processes. Being mindful of this, more and more organizations are investing in continuous…
5 Tips to Turn Tribal Knowledge into Digital Work Instructions
How do manufacturing trends impact work instructions? These are the main traits of the “Shop Floor of the Future”: It’s heavily automated. It generates tons of data. It’s connected. All of this with the aim to improve quality and production in manufacturing. However, we are…
CES Unveiled Amsterdam Impressions
Last week, SwipeGuide exhibited at CES Unveiled Amsterdam. Amongst the buzz and excitement during the buildup, we had an opportunity to talk to some of the other exhibitors and to capture some impressions before and during the event. CES Unveiled Amsterdam hosts an expected 50…
Make Better Manuals by the Day
Writing effective instructions can be tricky. What should I focus on? Which words should I use? How to make a manual that is appealing? How should I formulate my sentences in order to create an instruction that is as user-friendly and clear as possible?…
Instruction Manual Template: Instructional Design Canvas
Structure is one of the most important elements when you are writing a user manual. Without a clear structure, it is hard to see where something ends and where new parts begin. It is like reading a book that consists of several parts: the introduction,…
Manual Makeover: IKEA Kallax
IKEA is one of our dream cases when it comes to instruction manuals. Many times we were frustrated when assembling their beautiful furniture with the rather abstract paper manual. For our new office, we bought some Kallax shelving units and gave ourselves a little challenge:…
SwipeGuide at IFA Next 2018.
We will be at IFA Next in Berlin, August 31st to September 5th, 2018 and would love to meet you there to discuss the important (but often forgotten) role of instructions in digital transformation. SwipeGuide is presenting a home security project together with Somfy Northern…
Manual Makeover: CADAC Carri Chef 2
Summer holidays are here! As we want to go camping this year we decided to buy a CADAC Carri Chef 2 – a great appliance for cooking and grilling whilst camping. After getting all parts out of the box we needed some guidance in setting…
SwipeGuide Editor CMS Design Update
Don’t be shocked next time you log in to your SwipeGuide account – things will look a bit different. We’re gradually improving the navigation and overall UX in the SwipeGuide Editor CMS to make it even easier to create visual step-by-step instructions. Overall design changes that…
How to Create a User Manual: Best Practices for Work Instructions
Unclear work instructions are extremely frustrating for both companies and end-users, and end up creating far more problems than they actually solve. Far too often, traditional paper user manuals are: 👎🏻 Text-heavy 👎🏻 Difficult to understand 👎🏻 Too technical 👎🏻 Not at hand when needed…
Testing Wearables in Work Instructions
The SwipeGuide team is confident that wearables are an inevitable evolution in the field of work instructions. We wanted to test this assumption in a real production environment and chose to work with the operators at a brewery in Belgium. These are the findings from…
SwipeGuide UI/UX Design Update
Great news! Our developers have been working hard to update the UX/UI design of the SwipeGuide web-app for end users. Last night it went live and we are so proud of the end-results. This update is more user-friendly and provides even clearer instructions for your end…
How can a product manual be fun? – Nintendo’s Case
Is it possible for someone to have a fun and fulfilling time by just following the instructions of a step-by-step user manual? Yes, it is, and Nintendo proved it. A few time ago the video game company launched “LABO”, a cross cardboard-video game product where you…
The Necessity of Human Workers in Industry 4.0 – Tesla’s Case
As factories get more and more automated, it seems that the human factor in the form of manual labor is less and less necessary. Are we heading to a fully-automated, smart factory where the A.I. will do all the work? Probably yes. Are we there yet?…
Work Instructions in Industry 4.0
Last week SwipeGuide’s Growth Team exhibited at Hannover Messe in the Young Tech Enterprises section in the Hall 17 together with hundreds of robots and other startups. Our main goal of exhibiting at the biggest manufacturing fair in the world was to show the application of our…
10 Tips for Better Work Instructions
Where work is done, mistakes are made. Human errors account for 9 out of 10 incidents in the workplace. These errors result in loss of production, damage to equipment, and injuries. This costs industries billions per year and with work getting more and more…
Feature Update: Sentiment Measuring
SwipeGuide is constantly evolving and improving in order to give our customers the best possible tool to create effective instructions. Here are our latest improvements! New feature: Sentiment measuring → Improve your instructions based on real feedback from your end-users. This helpful feature enables…
How to Write a Good Instruction Manual: Creating Digital Work Instructions
Delivering knowledge to your workforce is essential. As jobs in the manufacturing industry become highly digitized and the global supply chain becomes more complex, it’s more important than ever to effectively distribute work instructions. By providing your end-users with clear and to-the-point work instructions,…
SwipeGuide Receives Equity Investment from Newion to Accelerate Growth
Very impressed with the technological sophistication of the SwipeGuide Instruction Platform and the growth of the company in the past year, Newion Investment and its current seed investor have invested one million euro in SwipeGuide. This investment will help advance the development of the instruction…