Knowledge

Here is a subject that I've harped on for several years and received the usual management response, "Don't Worry We've got it covered".

Here is a paper, Who Moved My Knowledge", given by Rich Schoonover (Enginuity LLC) at the 2006 Gas Machinery Conference.

Though this paper's emphasis is directed at Gas Transmission Industry I think it could be directly applied to any knowledge based industry.

Check the featured article.

http://www.enginuityinc.com/pg/163-5_200.html

 

[ScottyUK]

It's an interesting read. There are certainly strong parallels with the utilities in the UK.

I have limited (to approximately zero) sympathy with the employers and government policymakers who have brought this state of affairs upon themselves through their short-sighted decisions to reduce staffing numbers to the barest minimum, abandon apprenticeship schemes, avoid taking on new graduates with little experience, close down the R&D facilities, and so on. Having made the short term gains it seems the penny has finally dropped that those decisions were really bad news for the long term, and those responsible are starting to flap. Good.

The poor wages, unemployment, and forced moves away from friends & family which I and others of my generation faced when we graduated as direct consequences of the policies listed above might become a slightly less bitter pill to have swallowed when the inter-company fighting for experienced and talented staff raises salaries and benefits packages to above-average levels. In my industry it is getting better by the day and has been for a couple of years. Excellent news.

I am sad to see so much knowledge leaving my industry and I'm keen to learn from the engineers on the verge of retirement while the opportunity is still there. Most of these men worked in the nationalised electricity industry prior to its breakup. Unfortunately much of the knowledge once available through that nationalised industry is locked up in the heads of one-man-band consultants who were forced into that line of work through redundancy and now have no colleagues or employees to pass the knowledge on to, and in some cases no reason to: after all, the knowledge in their heads is how they pay their bills - if they make the knowledge available to all then they feel that they lose out. Personally I'm not in any hurry to empty the contents of my head into some computer database available to all. That knowledge has been hard-won and it is the basis of how I make my living, so why would I just give it away for the good of the company or of the nation?


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Sometimes I only open my mouth to swap feet...

 

[sms]

Knowledge retention and management is one of the many initiatives that are very valuable in the long term, but expensive in the short term. Since no one operates a business with a long term view anymore, the short term short sightedness wins out and knowledge management goes by the way side.



-The future's so bright I gotta wear shades!

 

[DaveVikingPE]

I don't think it matters.

They're worried about "the loss of operational skills and knowledge resulting from the rapidly retiring Baby Boomer generation"

eh, hire back the retirees as independent consultants.

That, or just yell at the new hires. Yelling can result in the right answers, now! There are books out there on how to do things, too, and there are enough engineers of all ages who can do the work. Plus there's always time to fix things during construction.

They can also outsource the work, no?

 

[MikeHalloran]

At my last real job, I took some pains to write down what I learned in my efforts to jack up their lore- based practices and insert some science as a proper foundation. The collected work amounted to a good start on a book, specific to their particular niche business, detailing every bit of engineering that needed to be done to assure a successful outcome on the first try.

You'll never find it on Amazon ... given their SOP of formatting the hard drives of departed employees' computers.


Winter will be tough, and the people who ate the seed corn will act surprised.









Mike Halloran
Pembroke Pines, FL, USA

 

[EdDanzer]

In the mid 1990’s, as the owner of a small business in my early 40’s I found I could no longer remember everything. So I spent some time and money trying to figure out how to remember what I had learned, and how to pass this to my employee’s and a future owner. The first observation was that I could not afford to search for answers. People search for lost items. I wanted to go to the location of relevant information and see what choices were made, and the results of those choices based on certain basic criteria then it would be easy to make a new decision.
No software is designed to do this, so I hired a programmer to work on a solution. After a few iterations and about $6,000.00 it became apparent this was no small problem, so I chose to suspend the project.
Fast forward 10 years, and the same problems exists. My grip with searches is the number of useless results, the same result from a different source, or no result. Sometime it seems you spend more time on a web search than it is worth. The problem with Wikipedia is it is not a tool I can use during work to capture what I’m doing as I do it. In order to capture knowledge it must be transparent to the person creating it.

It is easy to bash management, but what will you do when your future depends on capturing and recalling what you know? Your standard of living will depend on it as you get older.

 

[ScottyUK]

Keeping my own notes which help help me in my gloriously overpaid job (here's hoping!) is entirely different to giving away my knowledge in some misguided effort to dig the policymakers out of the hole they put us all in. They are free to BUY my services based on that knowledge, but it's not a charity. I'm trying to get enough money together to give me and my wife a reasonable retirement, something which is harder since the same people who downsized industry to death also managed to screw up the pension system for those who followed them, while callously ensuring that their pensions were secure. It would seem fairly simple logic that if you reduce the active workforce paying in to a pension scheme there will be less money to pay out to the retired members, but primary school maths seems to elude them as much as high school economics. The collapse of the UK pension system is another legacy for which we have to thank the policymakers of the previous generation.

I didn't make the system the way it is today, but I'm doing my best to look after myself and my family in spite of the mess my forebears have created. If that makes me somewhat mercenary with regard to the greater good then I don't have any remorse at all. I am still making up the losses in my early career when I watched the snake-oil salesmen, self-proclaimed management gurus and bumbling political fools line their pockets by picking at the carcass of the UK manufacturing base. Forgive me if I don't feel too sorry if they are finding things hard now.

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Sometimes I only open my mouth to swap feet...

 

[metengr]

ScottyUK;
Since I have been in the Power Generation industry just about my entire career, and have been thru numerous downsizing events and survived, I am in complete agreement with your statements. In today's work environment (deregulation) one needs to take care of themselves and family first. In a deregulated market it is all about cutting cost and making profits, first. Prior to deregulation, most electric utility companies were fun to work for, had a good succession plan for employees, and you developed a sense of a family loyalty.

 

[WGJ]

ScottyUK - I am in entire agreement.

It's not just Utilities either. Much of what you mention affects engineering effort right across the UK. The 20th Century saw accountants taking over engineering companies in the UK and it's them we have to thank for the mess.

I am hoping to get an early retirement (at 55) from my job soon and I'll be saying good riddance to it. I hope to be able to find more interesting and rewarding (not financially, I have to add) work.

By-the-by, my employer has been periodically shedding the more expensive, older, employees for some years now, and, in spite of the knowledge deficit they acknowledge they have, they have a policy of not contracting retired workers.



Bill

 

[MikeHalloran]

Stupidity enshrined as policy. The mind boggles.



Mike Halloran
Pembroke Pines, FL, USA

 

[arunmrao]

We have similar issues in India too. Ofcourse due to strong union the old are not being replaced that fast. There are no replacements and now the key posts are occupied by non engineers. Vendors like me who are in the after markets find it very difficult to communicate . Also we possess a lot of information regarding past performance of their equipments, problems encountered etc. All this knowledge is discounted and works are being allotted purely on numbers and how savvy you are. I am not as I am purely a hands on person and believe that my skills and sincerity will see the day through.

 

[0707]

Knowledge is very well exemplified in the The Engineer's Bill story. Organizations only recognize the need of people know how when they are in troubles then…then they forget until the next problem.
Organizations use people like vampires.

Here is the story


"The Engineer's Bill story”


There was an engineer who had an exceptional gift for fixing all things mechanical. After serving his company loyally for over 30 years, he happily retired. Several years later his company contacted him regarding a seemingly impossible problem they were having with one of their multi-million dollar machines. They had tried everything and everyone else to get the machine fixed, but to no avail. In desperation, they called on the retired engineer who had solved so many of their problems in the past.

The engineer reluctantly took the challenge. He spent a day studying the huge machine. At the end of the day he marked a small x in chalk on a particular component of the machine and proudly stated, "This is where your problem is". The part was replaced and the machine worked perfectly again.

The company received a bill for $50,000 from the engineer for his service. They demanded an itemised accounting of his charges.

The engineer responded briefly:

One chalk mark. ... $1
Knowing where to put it... $49,999

It was paid in full and the engineer retired in peace."

luis

 

[dcasto]

The paper does not even tap an equally important part of the knowledge drain, the transfer of people with knoweledge and skills out of engineering and operations and into the business role. This drain is because companies place more value (bigger salaries) to the business development departments than engineering and operations.

Another drain is the replacement of knowledge with "Company SOP's, company standards, and a general lack of trust by the younger people to do anything that hasn't been written by someone else or was generated from knowlege and not by the book". I was told I was a bad engineer because I engineered from knowledge and not by his college books.
I watched this young engineer take the manufacturers data on a 5 year old compressor and throw it out because he felt the field measurement on the compressor cylinder was better than the manufactures, why, because some he and some young mechanic squished sodier wire and found the compressor has less clearance than the maunfacturer stated, if he only new how that cylinder was made, oh well.

 

[jmw]

Intellectual Capital:
e.g.

http://www.juergendaum.com/news/03_16_2003.htm

This would appear to have originated, as a concept, many years ago in Sweden. The surprise (or maybe not) is that it is such a recently recognised concept.

Corporate thinking: That any employee could represent an asset of increasing value to the company is a totally alien and probably abhorrent. They have been conditioned by accountants to depreciate the value on everything they have (except land), and hence they also tend to treat employees as having diminishing value. Of course, each employee is a potential drain on the pension funds (see Wallmart).

The cult of youth: this may have passed its peak, though that peak seemed to come at an especially inappropriate point in time when the baby boomers where becoming the older generation. In one major UK bank this cul of "letting go" older employees in favour of new graduates was halted by new management who termed it "Corporate Amnesia".

Product life cycle: Something I have noticed in the various companies I have worked with is the product life cycle effect. New product development requires a certain set of skills. Once a product reaches launch stage those skills are starting to appear redundant and manufacturing and production skills take over. As the product matures, all that is left are the manufacturing skills. Ultimately these are outsourced and the product becomes a cash cow. Unfortunately, and usually, some problem will arise through a manufacturing step or sub-contract issue that affects the product and the necessary skills to identify and remedy the problem are no longer retained by the company.
Of course, in a well ordered company, each set of skills is retained by the simply expedient of transferring them to new projects.

HR have a role to play too. Anticipating that 60% of the skills will be retired by 2010 sets targets for recruitment and training; a form of succession planning and to be done in a timely manner designed to encourage knowledge transfer.
In how many companies are HR surprised when some one retires? Dies, yes, but retires? why does the retiree suddenly have to spend his last week or two "handing over"? Shouldn't HR have recruited a suitable recipient clone a year or two earlier?

Alas, ScottyUk is right, modern management is about short term thinking, not long term. Sadly too many companies think on a month by month basis lurching from one set of "end-of-the-month" figures (with all that they imply) to the next. Employees are an "overhead", and expediency for monthly adjusting the margins.


JMW

http://www.ViscoAnalyser.com

 

[moltenmetal]

Employees are an asset or a treasure only in corporate propaganda. In an accountant or CEO's mind, employees are on the expenses side of the ledger. Older employees, particularly "knowledge workers", are larger contributors to the expenses side of the ledger, so they're targets of opportunity when the time comes to drive down "costs", drive up the stock value and take a larger bonus.

That's why it's incumbent upon all engineers to understand the monetary value of their contribution to their employer, in dollars and cents terms- and to communicate this loudly whenever the opportunity presents itself. Getting yourself recognized for your contribution to the revenue side of the ledger is the only way to ensure that your contribution will be respected.

You can't solve the problem of declining "knowledge", which is more properly called experience or wisdom, by simply retaining older employees for longer periods- all that does is forestall the inevitable. What you really need is a succession plan: you need to hire new grads, promote younger employees, put older employees in mentorship roles, and formalize the transfer of experience and wisdom down the experience chain on a continuous basis. AND in addition to this, you need to put serious effort and MONEY into staff retention: you need to pay people what they're worth, recognize their extra effort with bonuses and incentives, and provide them the flexibility to live while they work.

When the baby boom retirement occurs (starting about 10 years from now and not ending for ~ 30+ years), those engineering ompanies with excellent staff retention and a functional succession plan will be like the one-eyed men in the land of the blind. Their retained experience and wisdom will be worth serious money.

 

[0707]

This is my definition for Knowledge:

“Knowledge is the capacity of positively criticizes everything that one learns”


Cheers

Luis

 

[DrillerNic]

The oil & gas industry is panicking right now about what has been termed "The big crew change"....something like 40% of all professionals in the O&G field right now will retuire over the next 10 years or so- there are lots of conferences etc about how to capture the knowledge in these guys and so on.

I have very little sympathy: that's what happens when you lay off all the younger guys in the oil price downturns of the late 80s and the late 90's. I was laid off and had to hustle hard to get another job unlike many of my contemporaries who left the industry- and so I'm looking forward to a big fat salary/ dayrate in a few years time!

 

[GrimesFrank]

Another view of the problem;
Even companies who say they have a succession plan in place are struggling. My company has such a plan and there are seniors/intermediates/juniors in place but what management (HR) has failed to realize is the workload those seniors/intermediates are under.

Not only do they have to review all junior work but initiate work for themselves. Staffing levels are based on previous years however; the plant ages and just like your beat up old Dodge fails at an ever increasing rate. This requires extra resource to repair. The seniors who were supposed to be mentors to the intermediates and the intermediates who were supposed to be coaching the juniors are all too busy trying to keep the plant from coming apart at the seams and us intermediates/juniors who are supposed to be taking their place in ~5 years are left twisting in the wind alot of the time.

Frank "Grimey" Grimes
You can only trust statistics 90% of the time.