The 7 Types of Waste in Lean Manufacturing.
Waste. We bet you’ve heard the word on the shop floor. In fact, we bet that you’ve dedicated a lot of your time to learning about – and trying to eliminate – manufacturing waste. But waste isn’t always obvious. Sure, things like employees lounging by…
Feature Update: Version Control
SwipeGuide is proud to release our new Version Control feature. This feature allows editors to effortlessly view and restore all previous versions of any work instruction at the guide level. Version Control will go live on Monday, June 3rd. Version Control is offered as an…
It’s All About Food Quality at the 2019 Food Sure Summit
The Best and The Brightest in Food and Beverage. Recently, SwipeGuide enjoyed the opportunity to participate in the 2019 FoodSure Summit, where our co-founder Daan Assen hosted a productive round table session. Here, heads of quality from leading food and beverage manufacturing companies shared the…
We Use This Simple Feature to Make Work Better for Everyone
“We focus on removing frictions and obstacles from work instructions to increase ease-of-use and make every process as lean as possible. That’s why I love the Effort Score. It’s a metric that goes to the core of what we’re trying to deliver to our customers.”…
TWI for the 21st Century: Digital On-the-Job Training
We all want to make manufacturing processes smarter, faster, and more productive. The best and the brightest in the business know that in order to achieve success in such a complex industry, work must be standardized. Standard Work impacts all elements of the manufacturing supply…
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…
The Future of Manufacturing – with 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. What about your work excites you the most? We’re really excited about what’s happening in the industry today. The manufacturing and heavy machinery…
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?…