In an industry that must remain cost-competitive, electronic work instructions are the only way to know that production is seeing the correct version of an instruction and the manufacturer can prove it.  Paper signatures are too easily lost, costly to scan and store, and do not provide the ability to easily “mine” or report later.

With electronic work instructions the presentation, authoring, archiving, approvals, sign-off and data collection are electronic and stored in a fully searchable database.

In a fast-moving industry, integration with other systems is a must for any electronic work instruction system.  If you want the correct BoM to be presented as part of the instruction, for example, then that BoM cannot be maintained via dual entry in the work instruction system. Objects maintained in other systems must be replicated via integration to the work instructions.

In Sequence, parts, BoMs, routings, work orders, WIP BoMs, and WIP Routings can be imported in a unidirectional feed to the Sequence database. When those change in ERP/MRP the changes come into Sequence and notifications are sent to authors indicating a change that may affect the work instruction.

Sequence can also be integrated with MES packages for seamless presentation of information from both systems that are needed in production.

Most companies in this industry must provide (or be capable of providing) the objective evidence to their customer that instructions were followed, signatures were collected at the right steps, and critical data including serial numbers or lot numbers are recorded.  Sequence provides standard reports or custom reports, but also gives companies the ability to create their own reports using third-party products such as Crystal Reports or SQL Server Reporting Services.