To find the balance between productivity and quality, subject matter experts (SMEs) must be able to easily share their know-how with their teams. Learn how you can provide the right person with the right information when they need it.

When the right person has easy access to the right information, expertise sharing can help employees reach operational excellence. Pharmaceutical companies should capitalize on the know-how and best practices of their SMEs in order to stay at the top of their game in such a fast-moving and highly competitive environment. Constant and quick access to in-house expertise actually makes it possible to speed up implementation of new tools, processes, and operating procedures.

The approach used to distribute GMPs (Good Manufacturing Practices) does not always facilitate practical implementation in production and QC laboratories. However, pharmaceutical companies must continuously train employees on best practices to ensure safety and guarantee that regulatory requirements for manufacturing, packaging, analysis, and storage processes are respected.

Though digital technology has become an integral part of our world, most companies continue to depend, for example, on paper documents to specify their operational procedures and ensure the best practices. It’s no secret that reading resource articles and partaking in PowerPoint training classes takes time for both student and trainer. Furthermore, these knowledge transfer methods aren’t always the most effective or engaging.

To respond to these challenges, companies can turn to step-by-step immersive video instructions filled with presentations, PDF documents, voice-overs, and notes… Pharmaceutical companies evolve in a highly controlled context and therefore have at their disposal an excellent means to promote and share knowledge and skills among peers.

Videos are more appealing and easier to use than written documents. The use of microlearning videos within a company allows it to enhance knowledge transfer. Work instructions through an immersive video contribute to the digitization of the best practices in manufacturing and quality control. They complement paper documents—or are a step towards going completely paperless!

In the pharmaceutical industry, instructions must always be clear and precise and can in no way be modified or incomplete. Operating procedures allow technicians to carry out tasks without the risk of error or omission. Adopting the best industry procedures and permanently optimizing processes prevents manufacturing incidents, delays, or issues from recurring while also contributing to reducing non-quality costs.

Microlearning videos make it easy to record the best practices and can be further enriched with diagrams, illustrations, photos, text, and markers. Laboratory technicians and operators can consult the interactive how-to video at any time and as often as they wish in order to fully comprehend a specific procedure.

The video format helps certain topics—oftentimes quite complex within the pharmaceutical industry—be more easily understood. It is reassuring for technicians to receive work instructions via an immersive video; showing rather than telling considerably improves precision and dramatically reduces the way in which something can be interpreted. video format helps certain topics—oftentimes quite complex within the pharmaceutical industry—be more easily understood. It is reassuring for technicians to receive work instructions via an immersive video; showing rather than telling considerably improves precision and dramatically reduces the way in which something can be interpreted.

Furthermore, the tutorial format makes it easy to organize and showcase information. SOPs (Standard Operating Procedures) must have a logical arrangement. Step-by-step immersive videos make it possible to divide a specific operating procedure up into multiple segments and can therefore focus on how every single action should be done in great detail. How-to videos can also evolve and be easily updated at any time. This is a great time saver for laboratory operators who no longer need to look up the latest operating procedure through paper documents.

To benefit from new technology and automation, every employee must proactively and continuously self-train in order to update their skill set. Expertise sharing empowers employees and allows them to independently upskill the handling of new tools and new procedures. Work instructions in video format can be accessed on demand and through any kind of media, directly in-house.

The P4 approach to medicine (Predictive, Preventative, Personalized, Participatory) largely relies on constant health data digitization, collection, and use through new technology. However, professionals within the pharmaceutical industry are constantly surrounded by new knowledge and material. This makes it difficult for them to find the exact information they need when they need it.

Microlearning videos can instantly respond to and remotely resolve these operational issues. Laboratory operators have direct in-house access to the information they need, which allows them to avoid manufacturing delays or standstills. Gathering the best practices for manufacturing and laboratory quality control will allow employees to access the required knowledge when they need it and help them in their decision-making process.

As it is better to predict rather than heal, QC analysts, in an effort to work towards continuous improvement, must be able to anticipate the smallest issue that could appear or become redundant. Managing inconsistencies and controlling risks therefore represent a major challenge for pharmaceutical companies. Implementing a knowledge management strategy will allow you to keep your competitive edge in an already highly competitive sector.

SMEs can therefore distribute their knowledge on a large scale and have it exponentially shared as a result of the network effect. Employees will consequently feel connected with each other and their SME peers.

Distributing a team’s best practices to other sites also places it in the global spotlight. Once SMEs see how their know-how is valued after being shared, they’ll feel further recognized and become more engaged. Sharing knowledge between employees also makes it possible to identify the most talented players.

Imagine you have just been hired as the new Operations Excellence Manager for a company that has already been in business for a number of years. And you’ve been tasked with managing the development of tools and methodologies that improve the skills and knowledge of your employees.

As you’ve done successfully in your previous companies, you immediately begin distributing a new list of standard operating procedures to all workers. No sweat for you–you’ve done this many times before, and with great success. Unfortunately, this time the results aren’t quite what you expected.

Times have changed: A few of your new hires had difficulty understanding the language the material was presented in; some of them were absent the day it was distributed, and many don’t see the relevance for trying to improve anything they have done for the last 10 years. Regardless, it is still your job to ensure that everyone is following the process as you deem necessary to achieve operational excellence.

Fortunately, technology is changing the way work instructions are created, shared and consumed. By incorporating How-To video solution into your workflow, you can now easily capture critical work instructions for distribution across your entire company. The result? Continuous improvement, enhanced productivity, reduced downtime, and of course, operational excellence.

Standard operating procedures are nothing new. They can be as easy as ensuring all employees on the floor are wearing steel-toed boots or as complex as how to make certain all medical and hazardous waste is properly secured for transport to the waste disposal facility. Many organizations rely on standard operating procedures to ensure consistency, safety and of course, profitability.

Unfortunately, in many industries, this important information is still maintained and distributed in thick binders of physical documents. Many manufacturing organizations will even print out large booklets of instructions, and then reprint that same documentation every time processes change. Imagine the cost if your procedures are modified four to five times a year?

As organizations around the world have evolved to paperless environments, digital work instructions can now be shared with employees much more effectively on mobile screens. Digital work instructions make it easy for any worker to create guidelines and share them with colleagues quickly and efficiently.

By digitizing these documents, employees within a manufacturing organization can be connected to each other and therefore improve organizational efficiency, flexibility, and safety. Digitized work instructions also make it easier to track production levels. Having this information makes it easier to address challenges while aligning everyone to the same goals.

Digitizing work instructions further benefits organizations interested in demonstrating a more ecological approach to doing business and lowering their carbon footprint. And of course, going paperless has the potential to save thousands of dollars in paper and printing costs.

But before you venture down the road of digitizing your work instructions, there are a few things to keep in mind:

• Understand your pain points: Do you know where your existing SOPs and processes are failing? Do you understand what you can do to change that? Perhaps your current system is too slow, the final product is not consistently of a high quality or you are losing too many person-hours to workplace injury.
• Determine a purpose: What are you looking to achieve as you deliver these procedures? Are they new? What is the end goal? It goes without saying that work instructions of any kind require a clear purpose. However, you might be surprised to learn how often this is neglected.
• Use simple language: No matter how complex your industry is, your instructions need to be easily understood. The most important idea to keep in mind when delivering work instructions is to do so as if the audience has no prior knowledge. Avoid using overly technical language, and if relying on How-To video, ensure that the camera is focused on the task itself, not on the person who is delivering the message. Speak in a clear and concise voice for all employees to understand, and leverage annotations for further comprehensibility.
• Consult others: Just like the creation of any other important content in your organization, it’s critical to ensure at least one set of eyes has reviewed your new set of instructions. This feedback is valuable to help determine the overall usefulness of this documentation. By using a video knowledge sharing platform, organizations can easily send short video clips and receive feedback almost instantaneously.

Delivering and enforcing effective work instructions and SOPs is critical to an organization’s success both as a quality manufacturer as well as to regulatory compliance. But simply throwing paper-based procedures and policies at employees and expecting compliance is no longer reasonable. By utilizing video work instruction software, organizations can create an accessible online library of digital work instructions as well as teachable moments. After all, workplace learning should still be fun. The technology and tools definitely exist to make it possible.