Eight Operations, Eight Photos, and the Reason Your New Starter Keeps Getting Step Four Wrong
Bench work in precision manufacturing is sequential and unforgiving. Deburring before drilling changes the outcome. Tapping before reaming changes the outcome. The order matters, the tooling matters, and the person who's been doing it for fifteen years carries the entire process in their head. When they're off sick and the agency temp picks up the job card, step four gets skipped because nobody wrote it down with enough detail to survive the knowledge transfer.
This template is an eight-operation visual work instruction that lives on the shop floor.
The Drawing Number Anchors Everything
Drawing No., Customer No., Customer, Description, Iss No. — the same five-field identification block used across this author's manufacturing template set. The issue number is the revision control. When Engineering changes the bend sequence on a bracket from Issue 6 to Issue 7, the bench work instructions need updating. Having the Iss No. in the record means you can filter for all work instructions still referencing Issue 6 after the change notice goes out — and fix them before someone builds fifty parts to the old method.
The Tooling image field sits before the operation sequence. One photo of the complete tooling layout for the job: fixtures, jigs, hand tools, gauges, everything the operator needs at the bench before they start. When the tooling photo shows a specific go/no-go gauge and the operator can't find it, they know to stop and ask rather than substituting something from the drawer that's "close enough."
Op No. 1 Through Op No. 8: The Sequence That Can't Be Rearranged
Each operation gets three fields: a text description (Op No. X), an image slot, and a notes field. Eight operations, twenty-four fields total. The text describes what to do. The image shows what it looks like when done correctly. The notes capture what the text and image can't — torque values, adhesive cure times, inspection criteria, the specific way you need to hold the part in the vice to avoid marking the finished surface.
This structure forces granularity. A verbal instruction that says "deburr and countersink all holes" becomes Op No. 3: "Deburr all drilled holes using 90° countersink tool, 0.5mm chamfer depth, hand-driven only — do not use power driver." The image shows the countersink seated in the hole at the correct depth. The notes say: "Check with fingernail test — edge should not catch. Reject if chamfer exceeds 0.8mm."
Three hundred entries later, your bench work library covers every part number in production. A new operator looks up the drawing number, opens the record, and works through eight steps with photos. They still need training. But they don't need the fifteen-year veteran standing behind them for the entire shift, because the fifteen-year veteran's knowledge is in the template, not just in their head.