Why Documentation?

What do I mean by documentation and why is it important to a manufacturing organization?

Let’s look at two categories of documentation: project execution documentation and existing plant documentation.

Project execution documents:
Pre-Project (Proposal and Scope) phase
Some of the documents done in this phase are more important than others.

Funding Request or Capital Expenditure (CapEx) docs – Your company probably requires some form of CER/AFE/AFx doc to request funding for a project. Realistically, the quality of these docs only has to be good enough to describe the project scope and justify the spend—usually just sufficient to get the project approved without multiple rejections and resubmissions. If you’re part of a larger organization with multiple sites competing for funding, you probably take a little more time and care preparing these docs. Either way, most sites have a system in place that works for them. You probably have templates with sections for Scope, Justification, Alternatives, and Risks.

Project schedules – Some projects are straightforward—a schedule in an Excel file is enough. Others are more complex; maybe you have equipment on the way from multiple vendors. For example, material receivers with a 16-week lead time from Vendor A, feeders with a 12-week lead time from Vendor B, extruder barrel sections with a 40-week lead time from Vendor C. Some of these require your “timely response” on approval drawings to hit those lead times. Your structural engineer needs to finalize the IFB (Issued For Bid) prints you used for the RFQs so the contractor has the IFC (Construction) prints to start detailing. Your PLC integrator needs a design and sequence of operations to get started. All of these elements have to stay on track for the project to be successful. Maybe a spreadsheet-based schedule still works for you; if not, you may need something with more capabilities that can help you identify critical path and keep the project on schedule.

Design reviews – Somewhere in this process, you will have a design review with your site staff: managers, operators, safety (HSE), process engineers, maintenance, and anyone else with a stake in the project. (You’re doing this before you order the equipment, right?) Capturing actions or changes in this stage saves time and start-up issues down the road.
If it’s done well:

• Your Operations folks know what Work Instructions, Procedures, and Training material need to be updated.
• HSE has identified any guards, handrails, grounding, or other safety features required so those are in place at startup. They know if any environmental permits need to be updated, material inventories will change, oil containment quantities will increase, etc.
• Maintenance has had input into the selected equipment and design and knows what’s coming. Getting their input early will make maintaining the equipment easier (less downtime) once it’s installed. If they need to stock more or different filters, hydraulic fluid, etc., they can have it onsite before the equipment is running.
• Your contractors have a clear idea of what’s expected. That means less change orders during the project and a more efficient startup.

RFQ/RFP Documents – Developing accurate and detailed requests for Quotation/Proposal documents is critical. On a small project, this may be a one-time document. On a larger project, you may have to do a high-level budgetary quote to get a quote for the funding request, then a more detailed quote when it is time to issue the purchase orders (POs). Failure to do the RFQ thoroughly will lead to change orders or disagreements with contractors over what’s in scope.

Project execution phase
Everything developed during the pre-project work must be maintained and monitored to ensure the project stays on schedule and on budget, along with additional needs at this project phase.

• Schedule:
  • The project schedule requires constant monitoring and updating.
  • The critical path may change as the project progresses.
• Budget:
  • POs and invoices to monitor budget.
  • Change orders.
• Vendor Staus:
  • Approval drawings – due dates, review, changes, return dates, impact to delivery.
  • Delivery dates, delays.
• Contractors/Integrators:
  • Monitoring and updating schedules.
  • Weekly/monthly status meetings.
  • Revision control on prints – this is a HUGE issue. It’s discouraging to all parties when something has to be reworked because an updated print did not make it to the installer.
• Sequence of Operations documents:
  • This is easy to overlook on small and medium projects. Let’s say you’re installing a new blown film or plastic compounding production line (Line 8) that is almost exactly like an existing line (Line 7)—just copy that PLC program and change the tag names, right? There’s invariably more in that “almost” than meets the eye.
    • Say that Line 8 has two additional feeders. Now you have two more feeders, two more receivers, and more I/O points (level switches, butterfly valves). You have to supply material to those two added receivers; even if your existing blowers can handle the added load, you need to decide which blowers will service those receivers. Can your PLC Integrator wing it when he’s onsite? Sure, but that’s more time onsite and a longer startup.
    • You’re moving a couple receivers up one level on Line 8; no change to the program, right? Well, the line from the raw material box now has a 15’ vertical section which plugs after a few draw cycles; now we need a purge cycle after each draw. More winging it and more programming time.
  • The feeders on Line 7 were from Vendor A, but we’re going with Vendor B on Line 8. How hard can that be? One uses a proprietary controller with one connection back to the PLC; the other uses an Ethernet/IP connection from each feeder controller back to the PLC, and the PLC has to poll the feeders individually. The PLC programmer needs that information up front.

None of these are showstoppers for your integrator; many of them will have routines they can start with and customize. “Oh, you have 10 heat/cool zones on your extruder; eight feeders from Vendor B, three fed by rotary valves and five by receivers with a flapper valve; three blower packages with feeders 1, 2, and 3 on Blower #1, etc.”
They can handle that and have a good program developed before they come onsite, but that program is a starting point only. Some tweaking at commissioning is unavoidable, but a well-documented sequence of operations can minimize that time and get your line running faster.

Design review actions – All the actions captured during the design review must be tracked to completion. Otherwise, the line is starting up and running without updated work instructions, labels, or training material.

Post-installation Phase
This is what most folks imagine when/if they consider documentation at all.
When a project is mechanically complete, there may still be documentation work to do:

• Work Instructions updated.
• Training material created.
• Prints updated and easily ACCESSIBLE for maintenance.
• Manuals created for Maintenance, Operations, and Engineering.
• Spare parts lists developed and reviewed.
• Preventive/Predictive Maintenance (PM, PdM) schedules developed and implemented.
• Bills of Material (BOM) developed.
• Equipment labelled.
• Project binders/directories created.

This documentation is all just basic project management, right? Yes, but this part of the project is often overlooked, or done just well enough to close the project and move on to the next one. At the point there is time to complete all the above, the line is running and making product, the invoices are paid, the project is financially closed. It’s not a visible priority. “Why are you still working on this? Why is this project still open?”

That leads us to the second category.

Existing documentation:
When it comes to project documentation, I have lived in that glass house—no stones from me. I understand the challenges of getting it right with limited time.

Accurate, well-maintained prints, manuals, and documents help every part of your operation:

• Operations can run the lines better; new employee onboarding is easier. That translates to less rejects/rework, faster setups, and better operator-performed maintenance.
• Maintenance can repair and maintain the line more efficiently. That means less downtime.
• Both of the above make the plant and equipment safer.
• Future project execution improves as well. In an older plant, every project starts with digging through old prints and manuals to determine what’s already installed. Having good documentation makes future upgrades or changes much simpler.

Let me ask a few rhetorical questions:

• Do you have a room at your plant that’s full of old prints, manuals, and brochures for equipment that is no longer there? Some of that you’re required to keep (record retention), but is the current information that your folks need easily accessible? Is it up to date?
• Are your prints up to date and easily accessible?
  • If you ask one of your engineers, “Where is the print for X machine,” can they find it easily?”
  • If you ask Maintenance, can they find it?
  • Do they find the same print? Same revision number? Does one of them have handwritten corrections?
• On your older equipment, do any of these sound familiar?
  • “Joe” installed that and he retired 5 years ago; nobody knows how it’s wired.
  • Do you have drawers of prints with unofficial pencil mark-ups?
  • Are there important notes on the inside of your panel doors?
  • Are the most current equipment drawings marked-up prints in the bottom of your electrical panels?
• How are your work instructions?
  • Are they up to date and formatted so your folks can use them?
  • Are there pictures of equipment in them that’s been changed out years before?
  • Are they formatted so they are easy to update, or does every simple revision take way too long because you’re on rev. 12 and formatting across documents is all different?
  • Does your document revision log show why a particular change was made? If rev. 12 was modified to address an audit finding, does the revision log show that? Or could someone in a future revision take that change out because they don’t know why it was there?

If you answered yes to any of the above questions, don’t feel bad. It’s not your fault. It’s a fact of life in manufacturing. The folks doing the work are busy doing the work. Documentation can become part of the paperwork, and it slides.

That’s where an experienced third party can help. Build that support into your project budget and let us help you. Whether it’s project support during any phase of your project, cleaning up prints, updating work instructions, or creating training material, we’ve done it.

In this post, I referenced a bunch of document types that are commonly used; you may have some or all of these, or more. Either way, we can help.

If you don’t have them, we can help you create a template. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel every time you start a new task.

Here are some common things we can assist with, either by working with you to develop a template or preparing these documents with you as needed:

• CER (Capital Expenditure Request), AFx (Authorization for Expenditure, or Design).
• Design Reviews.
• RFQ/RFP (Request For Quotation/Proposal).
• Project schedules.
• Change orders and change order tracking.
• Budget tracking.
• Work Instructions.
• Checklists.
• Revision control (Work Instructions and Prints).
• Updating prints in AutoCAD.
• Training documents and presentations.
• BOM (Bills of Material).
• Project Binders.
• Manuals.
• Maintenance rounds sheets.

Email or call to discuss how we can work together.