Cut Costs - Poor Documentation Is Impacting Your Bottom Line

Welcome to the Quarter20 blog series on work instructions. This is blog one of four in our series. To join the conversation, follow us on LinkedIn.

When teams think about cost-saving initiatives in manufacturing, documentation rarely makes the list. It’s seen as a necessary step, not a strategic one. But in reality, poor documentation is one of the most expensive blind spots on the production floor.

Outdated screenshots. Incorrect part numbers. Torque specs that don’t match. These small oversights can silently snowball into major operational failures.

In this post, we’ll walk through a real-world scenario with Rivian, where a simple failure to update work instructions after a design change led to an estimated $7M in avoidable costs. It’s a textbook case of how disconnected documentation processes quietly erode your bottom line.

Let’s break it down.

Real World Example: a torque value that cost Rivian millions

Product: Rivian R1T and R1S electric vehicles, premium EV trucks and SUVs, each priced around $70,000+

Situation:  During a key ramp-up period in 2022, Rivian discovered that a front seatbelt anchor bolt was not being torqued correctly during manufacturing.

An engineering update changed the torque spec on the B-pillar seatbelt fastener. The CAD and spec system were updated, but floor-level work instructions weren’t. Some versions of the docs were outdated, while others were missing the update entirely.

Technicians, trusting the instructions in front of them, used incorrect torque values on over 12,000 vehicles. Rivian was forced to issue a recall on virtually every vehicle it had delivered to date.

The Real Cost Breakdown

By the time the errors in the documents were discovered, 12,212 vehicles had already been assembled and shipped with incorrect torque specs on a critical safety feature. The result? Emergency inspections, rework, and damage control.

Total Estimated Cost:  → Approx $7M

…. All because a document didn’t get updated!

Where the Process Broke Down

If this scenario sounds familiar, it’s because it is. You might not be at the same scale as Rivian, but if you build hardware - your bottom line is also at risk.

Across manufacturing- from robotics to aerospace to medical devices - teams are wrestling with documentation that lags behind engineering changes. When documentation lives in a disconnected system, even a well-executed design change can turn into a costly production error.

This wasn’t a failure of effort. It was a failure of system design. At Rivian, millions of dollars evaporated over an incorrect torque value. 

Despite updating changes in CAD and other programs, the documentation used on the floor remained static and siloed. The process relied on someone manually updating screenshots, part callouts, and spec text across multiple documents. And like most teams under pressure, those updates didn’t happen in time.

Documentation is often treated as an afterthought. But as this case study shows, poor documentation doesn’t just slow teams down - it directly impacts the bottom line.

If your documentation isn’t keeping up with your engineering changes, it’s only a matter of time before it happens to you. The good news? There’s a better way - one that connects engineering to production without the manual busywork or costly gaps.

Takeaway: Don’t Let Old Docs Cost You Money!

Design changes happen. When downstream teams aren’t properly notified, it adds significant risk to the production line and these errors are expensive. If you want to avoid an expensive misstep, work instructions should always follow the below principles:

• Ensure CAD screenshots are always up-to-date with the latest design
• Maintain single source of truth for how parts, tools, and procedures are referenced across systems
• Enforce strict version control so techs always have access to the latest version and change history is tracked and audit-ready
• Follow digital execution for traceability of who followed which steps, when

With traditional tools, it’s possible to follow these principles, but requires a team-wide commitment to  strict process and dedicated labor. If you have extra time and brainpower, this might be the right approach for you.

For those who don’t?  Let’s talk about how CAD-connected documentation can automate this process for you.

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