Response to Melissa Bonneville's chptr 14 & 15 post

Its interesting that Melissa mentioned the performance test. This test and others are used by many companies when developing manufacturing and assembly process instructions for a new product. Employers do not want to head into full production of a brand new assembly without testing these instructions first. If they did it could cost them a lot of money in set up time that could be wasted. Instead they perform what is called a pilot run. The pilot run is a way to test all of the manufacturing and assembly process instructions for accuracy and completeness. For the pilot run the manufacturing plant sets up to build the assembly for a limited run. The quantity of assemblies built is somewhere between 10 and 20 units. This will give them enough information to determine the majority of required changes to the process control documents. An integral part of writing successful instructions is for the writer to be present during the pilot run. The writer then has opportunity to observe any difficulty in the manufacturing process. Testing your drafts is essential when writing process and assembly type instructions.