Use case: Visual work instructions
Work instructions that show, not tell.
A ten-page text SOP is technically correct and practically unread. TWI-inspired visual work instructions put a photo or video on every step, a caption under it, and a voice-over on top. This way the standard survives contact with a real shift. Especially inexperienced newcomers.
The basics
What visual work instructions are. And why text loses on the floor.
Following Training Within Industry best practices, a visual work instruction breaks a task into individual steps and shows each one: a photo or even a short video clip, one or two lines of text, and optional safety notes attached to the exact step where the risk sits. A worker at the station sees what “done right” looks like before doing it — not a paragraph describing it.
Text-only WIs fail on the floor for predictable reasons. Reading is slow under timed learning or, especially, on-the-job time pressure, and a warehouse shift is nothing but pressure. Many workers read in their second or third language, so a precise English sentence can arrive imprecise or even misunderstood. Of course, long documents get skimmed once at onboarding, then never opened again.
Images work differently. People process a picture of a pallet stacked correctly far faster than a sentence defining maximum stack height, and they remember it longer. As we all know, showing beats describing for physical tasks. A caption plus voice-over then carries the details the image can’t: torque values, weight limits, the order of two similar-looking steps, and more.
The catch has always been production cost. Screenshotting, cropping, and formatting steps in Excel or PowerPoint takes so long that instructions are outdated the day the process changes. Which is why most companies quietly fall back to text, or to nothing. Visual work instructions only pay off when creating and updating them is nearly free. And that's where how.fm comes in.
Create in just minutes
Capture the task once. AI does the formatting.
With how.fm Lean, either import a pre-existing WI with one click. Or someone films the task on the floor, done well, by the person who does it best. You can split the recording into steps, add or edit captions, and structure it as an (automatically translated) instruction you review and publish.
- From raw video to structured and appealing steps, automatically
- Photo, video, and text per step: easily edit anything before publishing
- Process changed? Re-capture only that single step, every version updates
Reach every worker
30+ languages, voice-over included.
Publish once and Learn delivers the instruction in each worker’s own language, with text-to-speech voice-over for anyone who’d rather listen than read. Low literacy stops being a barrier. And “did they understand it?” gets an actual answer via quiz.
- Automatic translation, respecting industry jargon and your site’s Glossary terms
- Voice-over for every step, in every language
- Quiz-gated sign-off where compliance requires proof
At the workstation
Instructions in the flow of work.
The best instruction is the one that appears when the unusual order does. And you anyways want to 'put them right at the station'. how.fm Live displays work instructions in a sidebar to your WMS or on a second screen at the station. Computer vision syncs to the actual order. Like turn-by-turn navigation for warehouse processes.
- The right instruction, triggered by the real task and progress
- No memorizing, no searching a folder structure
- Exceptions handled correctly the first time
Common questions
Visual work instructions, quickly answered
What are visual work instructions?
Visual work instructions are step-by-step guides that show a task instead of describing it: one photo or short video per step, a caption of one or two lines, and optional warnings placed exactly where the risk is. Workers follow them on a tablet, phone, or workstation screen.
What’s the difference between a SOP and a WI?
An SOP defines the whole process and its rules — scope, responsibilities, quality criteria. A work instruction is the operational slice of it: how one person performs one task at one station. Good visual work instructions are generated from the SOP, so the two never drift apart.
How do you create visual work instructions quickly?
Film the task once, on the floor, done by someone who does it well. With how.fm, AI turns that recording into structured steps with images and captions, which you review and publish. That takes minutes, not the weeks a written SOP rewrite takes.
Do visual work instructions work for multilingual teams?
That’s where they matter most. Pictures carry most of the meaning, and how.fm translates the captions into 30+ languages with text-to-speech voice-over — so a worker who reads little, or reads another language, follows the same standard as everyone else.
Turn any site into a center of excellence.
Let's hatch out first plans, in only 30 minutes.
An honest conversation around the processes you actually run: OHS, picking, packing, and more. Today vs. the future. No slide marathon. No irrelevant demo.