Getting started as a process editor

When you log in to Baseboard and get to the Process Editor home page, you'll see all the products your organization produces.

Create a product

Let's add a new product by clicking on the + icon in the top right, fill out the form and click on Save. Click on the newly created AR5's title or cover image to go to its product configurations.

Create a product configuration

A product configuration represents a single way a product is configured. For our AR5 arm, we have 2 configurations: one with a servo gripper and one with a pneumatic gripper. Click on the + icon on the top right, fill in the form for the servo gripper and click Save.

A new card appears with the Servo Gripper configuration, showing for each site that you could produce this configuration a dropdown with the existing Bills of Process (BOP). A BOP defines the production process for a specific product configuration at a specific site. It will record all the modules, how they depend on each other and what tooling, articles and steps are need to create them. Since each site is different in terms of tooling, machines, etc, they all need their own BOP for a product configuration.

Create a bill of process

We only want to produce our Servo Gripper at the Hellendoorn plant so click on the higlighted menu button to see all the BOPs for this specific site.

Just like there are revisions for mechanical and electronic parts (and their underlying files), Baseboard keeps track of the revisions of the (bill of) process. For the Servo Gripper at our Hellendoorn plant there are still none of course so click on the + icon in the top right of the table to create the first revision. The created revision is still in draft so it will not be visible to operations yet. We'll get to releasing this BOP and making it visible to operations at the end of this document. For now click on the looking glass so we can get started with creating modules inside the BOP.

Create a module

Baseboard defines modules as components that can be assembled, tested and shelved independently. Click on the + icon in the top right and fill out the form to create the first module.

Great, your first module is created! Click on the down arrow to see what you can do with it.

You can now:

• View: go into this module and start defining the steps to create it.
• Update: update the details of this module that you just filled in.
• Deleted: remove this module all together. This is a destructive and irreversible process so be careful! (the confirmation dialog will also explain this).
• Add Next: create another module and make it depend on the current module.
• Link to Previous: if there are other modules in this BOP, you can make this module depend on them.
• Unlink from Previous: If you linked a module by mistake, you can undo that here.
• Move Above: when several modules depend on the same module, they are aligned horizontally. With this option you can determine their vertical order.

Click on View to go into the Electronics Pre-Processing module.

Create a step

You'll see an empty list of steps on the left, click the + icon in the top right and fill in the form to create your first step.

The steps can be as elaborate or succinct as you need. You might want to get started with just a few simple steps and break them up later or go all-out (for example if you're copying from an existing instruction Word document) and define all the steps and substeps. This is what you need to know about the fields:

• Name: a short descriptive name for the step.
• Type: the step types are defined by your organization, for example Electronics , Assembly or Irreversible . Talk to your organization admin if you're missing one.
• Duration: how long should this step take? For example the step might take 1 hour and 15 mins, so fill in 1h15m . This might be used later by your organization for planning purposes.
• Instructions: tell the operator how to perform the step. You can use Markdown to make text bold or italic but you can also create headings, blockquotes or even tables if you need to.
• Images: add images to your instructions for clarity. You can only upload new images if you have that permission so talk to your organization admin if you can't but need to.

Click on Save to create the step. You'll now see some extra tables appear

Articles

The articles table contains all the parts and consumables that your operator will need in this step. You can add an article manually (the top row) or from your EBOM (the bottom row).

Consumables are supplies that are need but also used up after this step. Good example are glue or gloves. Consumables are (almost) never part of the EBOM but are needed for the MBOM and so you need to add them in each step manually.

Parts are components of the module and should come from the EBOM. We say should because sometimes a part is missing in the EBOM but you want to continue defining the steps without waiting from a new EBOM revision. You can still add the part manually but you should probably log an issue with engineering so it becomes part of the next EBOM. Take a look at getting started with EBOMs for more details about loading EBOMs, assigning their parts, etc.

Checks

You can now also add checks to this step. A check will need to be filled out by your operator for each serial number they produce.

Click on the + icon in the top right to add a check.

There are 3 types of checks

• Confirm: your operator only needs to check a box.
• Numeric value: for when a value is needed, for example by measuring resistance. You can also set a minimum and maximum value to restrict what the operator can fill in.
• Text value: allows for arbitrary text to be given.

In the description you can tell your operator what to check, measure or describe. Check the required box if this check is required before an operator can complete production of this module.

Issues

You just started out with this step so there aren't any issues logged with this step. When they inevitably arise, they will show up in the issues table

Operators can log issues during production and they will be traced back to the step they were in at that moment. You can view them here, resolve them, unlink them from this step, etc. Take a look at getting started with issues for more details.

Rearranging steps

Add a few more steps and you can start rearranging them by drag-and-drop. Grab a step in the steps overview on the left by its handlebar, highlighted here:

You can drag them above or below a step or make it a sub-step. Steps can never become sub-steps of themselves so if you need that, first drag it to (for example) the root and then drag it again to where you want it.

Releasing your bill of process

Go on with creating and rearranging steps till you're satisfied with this module. And then move on to creating other modules, linking them to each other till the whole bill of process is complete. It might look something like this

Go back to your BOP revision overview and click on the highlighted release button

You'll get a confirmation dialog asking you if you're sure that you want to release the BOP. Make sure that you are because once released, the BOP will be read-only and you cannot delete or update it, ever, except when you delete the whole site or product configuration. Baseboard does this to ensure you always know what the process looked like at a certain revision. You can of course always create a new revision of the BOP and change it. Once released, the BOP is available for your operators.