Build your own work instruction template for free

Why the formatting matters later

Most templates are a picture of a document. Bold text standing in for a heading, a drawn box standing in for a table, numbers typed at the start of a line standing in for steps. It prints correctly and it carries no structure at all, so a phone, a screen reader, a search index or an assistant all see one long paragraph.

What this builder emits is the real thing. Headings are Word headings, numbered steps are a numbered list, tables are tables. The document looks the same and knows what its own parts are, which is what lets anything lay it out again on a smaller screen. The PDF carries real text rather than a picture of it, so it can be searched, copied and read aloud.

What goes in a work instruction

A work instruction tells one person how to do one job. It is narrower than a procedure, which describes how a process runs and who owns it. If you are writing to satisfy ISO 9001 or AS9100, the standard asks that the work is controlled, not that it looks a particular way, so the shortest document a new starter can follow without asking is the right one.

• A number, a revision and an owner, so anybody can tell which copy they are holding.
• What to have ready before step one.
• Hazards, said before the step they apply to rather than collected on the front.
• Steps, one action each, starting with a verb.
• What to check before the job is called done.

Work instructions for manufacturing

A manufacturing work instruction covers one operation, on one part, at one machine. That is narrower than most templates assume, and the narrowness is the point: whoever is reading it is standing at the machine rather than at a desk. Of the starters above, setup sheet is the one for a setup and work instruction is the one for a job that runs the same way every time.

So it carries what the general shape leaves out. The part number and the operation, because the machine runs something else tomorrow. The machine, the fixture and the program, because a setup does not travel. Tooling as a table, station by station. And a first-off check with the nominal and the tolerance next to it, which is the step that catches a bad batch at one part instead of two hundred.

Write every step as something a person can do. “Set the spindle to 2,400 rpm” is a step. “Ensure correct spindle speed” is not: it asks the operator to already know the answer, which is the thing the document was supposed to tell them.

The list you arrived with is a procedure’s table of contents: title and identification, purpose, scope, responsibilities, tools and equipment, safety. Most of it is already above under plainer names, and two of the six are not this document’s at all. Scope and responsibilities say where a rule applies and who answers for it. They change on their own schedule, and copied onto every operation they go wrong everywhere at once the first time a job moves. Leave both on the procedure. Standard operating procedure is one of the starters above and it carries them, with purpose written out in full rather than as the line under a title.

Writing these for a machine shop? What ScanToRun does for machine shops covers the same workflow in shop terms, including the training register that shows who signed for which revision.

The part a template does not fix

A template solves the format. It does not solve the copy on the wall by machine four that is two revisions behind, and it never has. Writing a good document and getting the current version into the hands of whoever is doing the work are separate problems, and the second one is where the money and the audit findings are.

That is what we make. A QR tag goes on the machine, the door, the bench or the cart. Somebody scans it with the camera app on the phone in their pocket and the current revision opens, laid out for a phone from the Word file you already have. Change the document and every tag pointing at it is right the same minute. Nothing to reprint, nothing to walk around and swap.

The tags themselves are free to try. Ask us to mail you a pack and stick them where the work happens. No account, no card.

Not a shop? The same thing for any business, written for no trade in particular.

Questions

Is it really free?

Yes. No account, no email, no watermark. Nothing you type here is sent anywhere: both files are built in your browser, so the document never reaches us at all.

Can I use these for ISO 9001 or AS9100?

Nothing here is certified, and no template can be. The standards ask that the work is controlled and the current revision is the one in use, which is about your process rather than your file. These give you the shape; the content and the control are yours.

Why is nothing filled in?

Because a filled-in template is somebody else’s document, and the first job it gives you is working out which parts were meant for you. The sections are named and the rest is yours.

Word or PDF?

Word if you are going to keep editing it, which is nearly always. The headings, steps and tables come through as real Word styles, so anything can lay the document out again later. PDF for handing over and printing. It is fixed to a paper size, which is why it reads worst on the phone in somebody’s pocket.