Capturing Maintenance Experience: Two-Way Knowledge Transfer
June 29th, 2009 by Brad Young
We all know that there is a massive wealth of knowledge that is accumulated by the shop floor engineers and mechanics—the ones who are getting their hands dirty performing the maintenance tasks day in and day out. But capturing that information has always been somewhat elusive. Whether you call it “knowledge capture,” “‘best practices” or “knowledge management,” the goal is the same: find a way to let your entire organization benefit from the know-how that exists in small pockets within your company.
Due to the difficulty we have all experienced in capturing best-practices, it is a common assumption that it must be very difficult to achieve. A holy grail that is pursued but never quite found. But in some cases, achieving this goal can be surprisingly easy.
We’ve seen a few interesting examples of equipment operators saving big, simply by offering their shop floor mechanics a chance to recommend changes to parts catalogs. The idea is quite straightforward: next to each item in an electronic parts catalog (EPC), or each task in a maintenance manual, there is a link that the user can click to initiate a change request. Each time that a mechanic sees a part listing that s/he feels should be updated with alternative parts or processes, s/he simply makes note in the change request form. Those responsible for the maintenace information review the request for technical soundness, then publish it using a one-click approval process that shares this update with all other users of the system. (Dealers can even submit change requests to the OEM so that valuable information can ripple through the entire supply chain.) These maintenance notes are always available even when an updated EPC is received from the manufacturer.
In some ways, this is nothing new: mechanics could always request engineering changes. But the hassle involved with initiating a request usually led to the process ending before it even got started. And in the few cases when mechanics took initiative, the effort of incorporating these changes and maintaining them over time further dampened the spirit. It was almost as if someone who offered best-practices knowledge was considered a ‘troublemaker,’ which further discouraged participation.
Now, with the change requests appearing in-line within the catalogs, these troublemakers are heroes. Their know-how brings savings to the equipment operator, and makes the documentation management process even easier. Of course, the positive feedback that mechanics receive for making the effort is spurring on more participation—the knowledge just continues to flow. And wasn’t this our goal in the first place? Letting the knowledge flow in two directions generates procedural cost savings, almost immediately.
This feature can also be taken to the next level to help with business processes such as warranty management, early warning and inventory planning. I’ll explore this further in a future uptime blog post.








