As a Process Engineer, I would get called at ungodly hours of the night to respond to various emergencies in the field or on the production line. A call that late usually meant a critical piece of equipment had failed.
Once I arrive on site (or more often while en route), I would direct containment measures to ensure the offending piece of equipment was now isolated from the rest of the process.
Industries like the chemicals and pharmaceutical industries rely heavily on the reliability of their processing equipment. It was my job as the Process Engineer to not only troubleshoot the issue, but more importantly to determine the root cause, so as to prevent the same issue from recurring in the future.
Very often, that would mean hopping onto the equipment vendor’s website to download the latest copy of the operations and maintenance manuals (because the local copy that came when the equipment was first installed has now disappeared into a black hole. But more on that in another post).
In the middle of the night, with an active leak in progress, how many clicks does it take for a Process Engineer or other end user to access the 100-page user manual on your company’s website? Why is it 100 pages anyway? Is it just a hodge podge of years of sticky notes, emails from internal Subject Matter Experts, and your best guess thrown together? Or does it clearly guide the end user to the sections that they need in a pinch?
Let’s discuss today how we can get your documentation to continue to deliver value to your end user long after they paid the invoice. Let’s ensure they become repeat customers!
This article is also published on Linkedin.
Words by Simone 