SOP Automation through Active Knowledge Transfer™


SOP Conversion and Hosting Through Certified BLUJACKET Partners

The use of SOPs (Standard Operating Procedures) is necessary across many regulated industries to ensure that employees work in a safe and compliant manner. All employees must therefore receive SOP training. As SOPs are detailed descriptions of the steps to take in performing a task, they are a common area of focus during facility inspections by regulatory authorities throughout the world.

A growing trend in regulated industries is conversion of static, paper-based SOPs to interactive, multimedia e-Lessons. The use of graphics, animations and interactivity not only increases comprehension and understanding but also provides a more enjoyable learning experience for employees.

BLUJACKET Certified Partners’ SOP conversion services generally operate on 4 different levels (Level 1 – Level 4) with each increase in level reflecting an increasing sophistication in the degree of conversion.

The conversion levels are as follows:

Level 1

• Redesign document for Training based on SOP
• No text changes
• Hardcopy assessments & manually file results
• Output Result: doc, pdf, html, etc.

Level 2

• Create BLUJACKET project plan based on SOP
• No text changes
• Insert client’s media (if any)
• Electronic assessments & file results manually
• Output Result: Outline of BLUJACKET SOP Project

Level 3

• Create BLUJACKET Lesson based on SOP
• No text changes
• Create/modify graphics, animations & audio
• Electronic assessments & record results in BLUJACKET Reports
• Output Result:  BLUJACKET Lesson with graphics, animation & audio

Level 4

• Create BLUJACKET Lesson based on SOP
• Extract salient points from text
• Create/modify graphics, animations & audio
• Electronic assessments & record results in BLUJACKET Reports
• Output Result:  BLUJACKET Lesson with graphics, animation & audio

Storage, distribution and version control of electronic SOPs can also be more time and cost effective. BLUJACKET’s Certified Partners can fulfill all of these functions securely and efficiently.

SOP Assessment

More and more regulatory bodies are insisting on proof that SOP training is effective. The traditional proof of knowledge transfer – a signed “read and understood” hard-copy statement – is no longer adequate.

BLUJACKET Certified Partners assist their clients in addressing this problem by enabling employees to assess themselves on SOPs electronically using the robust, secure assessment BLUJACKET engine. This assessment asks the employee client-approved questions that are designed to provide proof of knowledge transfer. The assessment results are stored electronically for internal training management and regulatory purposes.

Since the introduction of new regulatory bodies including HIPAA, SEC 17a, and Sarbanes-Oxley emphasis on training during regulatory inspections has increased.

Basically, BLUJACKET’s project based program sees each part of an operation as a project. Thus, there may be a Quality Project, a Production Project, etc.  To function in compliance with various industries’ regulations each of these projects requires employees who are competent in the tasks of that project. In other words, they must have the necessary knowledge and skills to perform their jobs properly.  BLUJACKET allows for projects to have relationships with other projects so that one project must be completed successfully before a participant is allowed to begin another related project.  If a participant fails to score a minimum score in an assessment of a project BLUJACKET can assign a remediation project and can re-issue these remediation projects until a minimum score is achieved.

To achieve competence, each job function must first be described in terms of required competencies (Needs Analysis). Once this is done, an appropriate training program can be devised and implemented.  BLUJACKET’s Certified Partners are experts at guiding clients through the needs analysis process and building BLUJACKET projects to support training and assessment of competencies.

As part of an inspection of each system, training/qualification of personnel is specified as one of the areas that inspectors must examine. According to various compliance program guidelines for staff:  “For…training/qualification of personnel, the organization should have written and approved procedures and documentation resulting there from. An organization’s adherence to written procedures should be verified through observation whenever possible.”

Key procedures in achieving employee competence are SOPs (Standard Operating Procedures). SOPs provide detailed instructions on how to perform certain tasks or procedures in a consistent way. They are therefore a key part of training programs. Since many procedurized tasks are critical to product quality (e.g. a manufacturing process, an analytical method) the corresponding SOPs are frequently examined by industry inspectors.

Many companies have their employees ‘sign-off’ on an SOP to state that it has been read and understood. Yet this sign-off in itself doesn’t prove that the information or knowledge has been transferred from the SOP to the learner. It simply proves that the words were read but not necessarily understood.

In the current regulatory climate, proof of knowledge transfer during training is being viewed as necessary to determine if personnel are trained/qualified. An example of proof is a successfully completed assessment. Our experience from talking to clients is that more and more companies are introducing multiple choice assessments as a means of evaluating employees’ knowledge of certain SOPs.

This is not an easy task. With many companies having in excess of 500 SOPs, there is potentially a huge administrative burden on Training Departments to produce the required assessments for each SOP and to ensure each employee is assessed.

BLUJACKET partners develop assessments routinely as part of their BLUJACKET Lesson production cycle. With their expertise in this area they not only help you develop an SOP assessment program, they also can assist you in identifying training needs and formulating and implementing your training programs.

In addition, BLUJACKET partners have the BLUJACKET Certified technical expertise to automate the SOP assessment process using the BLUJACKET “assessment engine”.  “BLUJACKET Certified” means that a BLUJACKET Partner has successfully completed a BLUJACKET Competency Course.   Using the BLUJACKET  engine, SOP assessments can be taken electronically and the results stored in a secure database. The BLUJACKET assessment engine can also be configured to interact and ‘talk’ to existing applications such as existing document management systems, data mining tools and common spreadsheets.

Please contact us for more details on Certified BLUJACKET Partners’ SOP services.