top of page

The Value of Videos
For Training and Support

The story of why I created the Creo Parametric YouTube channel explains how your product development organization can benefit from using videos for Creo Parametric and Windchill training and internal technical support.

​

I worked as a CAD and PLM administrator for Blue Origin. New employees would attend a few hours of in-person training on our Creo and Windchill processes. Quite frankly, it was overwhelming, especially for people new to both systems.

​

If someone needed a refresher on Top Down Design practices in Creo or how to create a Change Notice to release a drawing, they could retake the entire class. Of course, no one did that. The end users would either stumble through it on their own, or more likely, ask someone who sat near them (who often did know the correct process themselves). They were likely to make a mistake, causing more work for themselves and the admins.

Crew Capsule.JPG

I would often have end users drop in at my desk for a “quick” question. Anyone who has been a CAD or PLM admin can probably tell you that “quick” can mean 45 minutes. It would disrupt my work and it wasn’t fair to the people who had submitted internal tech support questions through the company system.

​

The questions were often fairly straightforward. Can you show me how to create a Copy Geometry feature? How do I keep the components in my mechanism from changing position in a drawing view? How do I create a 3D Annotation? How can I remove certain components from my Bill of Materials?

​

Regarding technical support, it was obvious that users were submitting tickets for the same issues over and over. And they were often things that people could fix themselves. Adding an instance to a Family Table. Fixing an accidental revision to a part.

 

I performed an analysis of six months of tickets to determine where we could benefit the most from process improvements, user training, and easily accessible resources that people could use to solve their own problems.

 

I presented my management with two recommendations:

  • Record our new employee CAD and PLM training so people could access it on demand.

  • Allow me to record a series of short videos on our most common CAD and PLM questions and issues for our internal video system (BlueTube).

 

Then I waited. And waited. And waited…

​

After a few months, I accepted that lack of approval was a de facto rejection of my request. While taking a walk one Sunday morning, I realized that I shouldn’t be waiting for permission from those I reported to. In fact, I was limiting myself by restricting the videos to my employer. I could make these videos available to the entire world on YouTube.

 

Their lack of response was a blessing in disguise. Three days later, I posted my first video. As I write this, it has been almost 6 years (2,152 days to be precise). I have posted 1,035 videos so far. That’s an average of a video almost every other day (0.48 videos per day).

​

Just like 6 years ago, I believe companies can benefit greatly from using videos for training and user support. You can perform a quick cost benefit analysis. Given the burden rate of your engineers and designers, how much would saving one hour per week of lost productivity benefit you? How much could you increase enforcement of company standards? How much could you reduce time to market?

​

I’m going to release a series of videos that will help you create your own videos for internal training and user support.

But honestly, not everyone has the aptitude or inclination to create videos. And that’s okay. If that describes you, then let me be of service. Reach out to me at dmartin@creowindchill.com to find out more.

bottom of page