SOP Manuals for Production/Operations
The book of knowledge: SOP Manuals.
Yesterday I completed my 15th SOP manual. This one was for a client wanting to produce mushrooms. This is ironic since I finished a mold remediation course last month and am now certified to remediate molds. Imagine in one month, you were learning how to grow and kill the same thing.
Writing the manual came up during a discussion with them as we were all figuring out what to do. One of the guys said we all need to know how it is done first and then asked me if I could put together the SOPs. Since I had written a production manual for each of our products in my previous company, I figured this would be a great task for me. Writing this kind of stuff comes naturally to me. I have never been one to write or read fiction. Sometimes I find the most difficult part of writing is to choose what to write about. Knowing the general subject sets me up to move forward with the task. It isn’t about being fun; it is about being focused on a task.
While working for my previous company, we were a small and busy group. I often worked seven days a week for 60, 80, and 100 hours. I wasn’t the only one working that much either. Needless to say, we were all incredibly busy, especially in the first ten years. We never had the time to write out our processes. That was until we needed to. We had hired a new CEO, who signed up a company as a “licensed manufacturer.” We didn’t yet have any of our processes written down. Since we were now going to have someone manufacture one of our products, we needed a manual written to ensure the new manufacturer would do things exactly as we wanted. I was tasked with the job. At the time, I was in charge of all of our sales and marketing and was the technical person who answered all the questions the people answering the phones could not.
I shut my phone off for a solid week and didn’t check my email either. I had to close myself off from the outside distractions to write this. Since I had worked on the formula and made the product myself a few times, I knew what I was writing about but had never written anything like this before. I created a step-by-step manual covering all the steps for production, all the tools used, including pH and brix meters, how to calibrate and use them, opening and closing valves in a certain sequence, and even a troubleshooting section. I imagined a person who knew nothing about the product they would make. Thus, I had to create a section detailing the ingredients (a mixture of dozens of different microbes) and set them at ease to know that, aside from climbing in a tank and drowning themselves, the microbes were completely safe. The manual was 32 pages in 8.5 x 11 format when I finished. After a few edits from my partners, it was finished. Then I started to work on a sales and training manual. That was 60 pages. Later, our agronomist edited it, ending up with almost 90 pages.
These two manuals became our product guidelines for training new employees. We never realized that we needed these manuals internally. We just never had the time to do it. Another benefit of having these manuals was that they became company assets. Their value was tied to the manufactured product quality and customer satisfaction, and they were great reference materials. They also helped us be more efficient. Later, I wrote 13 more manuals, one for each one of our products.
From this experience, I have decided to start offering SOP manuals as a service to my clients. My prior experience mostly deals with fermented products; however, I can also work on SOP manuals for farming operations to help them be more efficient and expedite new hires' training process. If you know anyone in need of this service, please share this article or the following link: https://www.probioticshealtheworld.com/services.
Eric