Factory of the Future 2014 centers on Workers ! Tacit knowledge is key not just explicit knowledge!

Sorry for missing last week, just in too many planes. But time to read and reflect on points, and I was discussing an opportunity in Korea with a colleague. Some in the customers think tank asked him to present at a high level the landscape of manufacturing in the future 2020 +. Not surprising to me he centered the new world of manufacturing and industry around the “worker and human decision making/ action”, going out to the processes and then production assets.

I was then reading some background material around Horizon 2020 call for tenders relative to “Factory of the Future” driven by European Commission.

Under Horizon 2020, the EU Framework Programme for Research and Innovation, for 2014-2020, the new contractual Public-Private Partnership (PPP) on Factories of the Future (FoF) will build on the successes of the FP7 Factories of the Future PPP.
The FoF multi-annual roadmap for the years 2014-2020 sets a vision and outlines routes towards high added value manufacturing technologies for the factories of the future, which will be clean, highly performing, environmental friendly and socially sustainable. The priorities have been agreed within the wide community of stakeholders across Europe, after extensive public consultation.

The interesting focus of this year of the program was around the worker, both in increasing the effectiveness of the different workers but also attractiveness of industry to entice the new generation of workers to want to engage in this industry. This has been a challenge for the last 15 to 20 years where the industrial sector has been seen as slow, and of limited innovation. But “the times are a changing” and innovation is happening fast, and with the acceleration of the industry down the “internet of things” path (as the biggest potential value growth of this approach is in industry with it’s millions of devices) so will come innovation.  

This year’s Factories of the Future work program includes a call for proposals that address increasing the attractiveness for workers. The scope of proposals could have included:

• Methods and tools for design or adaptation of facilities and technologies to support productivity, well being, and worker autonomy in production

• New methods and technologies supporting knowledge capture and team interaction to enhance work satisfaction, safety, and ergonomics

• Integration of innovative production technologies supporting increased productivity and flexibility, and

• Training and educational aspects to raise job attractiveness for young people and the elderly

The call text specifically mentioned scheduling of work and design of work places, adaptive technology such as augmented reality, addressing tasks holistically, and production systems ensuring efficient transfer of knowledge and information. New systems must support the “tacit” knowledge of the worker in the process of controlling advanced machinery and production lines.

Tacit knowledge is not easily shared. Although it is that which is used by all people, it is not necessarily able to be easily articulated. It consists of beliefs, ideals, values, schemata and mental models which are deeply ingrained in us and which we often take for granted. While difficult to articulate, this cognitive dimension of tacit knowledge shapes the way we perceive the world.

In the field of knowledge management, the concept of tacit knowledge refers to a knowledge possessed only by an individual and difficult to communicate to others via words and symbols. Therefore, an individual can acquire tacit knowledge without language. Apprentices, for example, work with their mentors and learn craftsmanship not through language but by observation, imitation, and practice.

The key to acquiring tacit knowledge is experience. Without some form of shared experience, it is extremely difficult for people to share each other's thinking processes.

Tacit knowledge has been described as “know-how” – as opposed to “know-what” (facts), “know-why” (science), or “know-who” (networking). It involves learning and skill but not in a way that can be written down. On this account knowing-how or embodied knowledge is characteristic of the expert, who acts, makes judgments, and so forth without explicitly reflecting on the principles or rules involved. The expert works without having a theory of his or her work; he or she just performs skillfully without deliberation or focused attention.

Tacit knowledge is typically difficult to capture and transfer from one worker to another, so if systems could be designed to do so, it could minimize loss of critical tacit knowledge and thus help relieve the skill crunch related to the aging workforce. At a macro level, this could increase the industry’s capacity to innovate and capture knowledge. In the concept of Operational Manufacturing Interfaces the ability to capture, embed evolve operational procedures, process based upon experience is key. With this there is a basis for companies to build and evolve through consistent and optimized operational actions aligned to decisions in the NOW, providing the foundation for "Operational Innovation". This is not natural in the traditional HMI, Industrial Workstation and in the way design our industrial systems for the last 20 years, it is time change!

It would indeed be very valuable to adapt the work place, work scheduling, interactions with production technology and documentation to the skill level and mental and physical state of the worker. It would also be a major advance to be able to adapt the decision support content and mode of communication to both the state of the production line or factory and to the state of the worker.

It is pleasing to see the continued evolution and alignment around the thinking of workers, how "operational Innovation" can become a natural part of the systems.