Below are a pair of videos that I wrote, filmed and edited to demo VIA’s Man-IT™ MES software. In the videos, I design and run a simple manufacturing operation: scanning an item into the software’s database. I shot the videos at my desk in my apartment during the early parts of the pandemic.

A priority was to keep the videos short. Combined, the two clock in at 8.5 minutes. In that time I cover lots of navigation and programming material, but at a rather superficial level. The videos aren’t meant to teach viewers how to do such-and-such with the software, but are meant to familiarize the viewer with the software’s appearance and programmatic features. In other words, to pull the curtain back just a bit.

Implementing an operation from beginning to end—that is, from design to “production”—demonstrates both the software’s ease of use and its versatility. At a certain level, the software boils down to clicking around the screen and assigning variables. Not too complicated in that regard. But the videos also show the software’s power and design flexibility. Viewers get the gist of how the software’s many parts interact, and how complex process designs arise from many individual programming choices