Does this scenario sound familiar? Your best operator is retiring, and suddenly you realize: all the crucial knowledge in his head is about to disappear. The quick fixes for breakdowns, the subtle signals that indicate a problem, the tricks to keep that one difficult machine running optimally – all gone.

This is the reality for many manufacturing companies. The unwritten knowledge of your operators – also called "tacit knowledge" – is worth its weight in gold, but difficult to capture. It's about experience, intuition, and skills that employees have built up through years of doing, not reading. And that's precisely why this knowledge is so hard to transfer.

Why is this such a challenge?

The core of the problem: operators often can't even explain what exactly they do. They simply feel when a machine isn't running right. They know from experience which approach works for which breakdown. This intuitive knowledge isn't in a manual or checklist – it's in their fingers, their hearing, their years of experience.

For companies like yours, this means enormous risk. When experienced people leave, they take irreplaceable knowledge with them. New employees have to reinvent the wheel, mistakes get repeated, and productivity drops.

Modern solutions for capturing knowledge

Fortunately, there are now smart ways to digitize this invisible knowledge:

Voice and image make the difference. Instead of asking operators to write everything down (which almost never happens due to time constraints), you can reverse the process. With mobile apps, operators can quickly record what's happening using voice or a photo. A breakdown? Take a photo and describe what you see. Problem solved? Explain how in 30 seconds. This direct, low-friction way of recording ensures that valuable insights aren't lost.

AI as translator. Modern AI tools can transform these loose pieces of information – photos, voice notes, brief observations – into structured knowledge. This makes one operator's experience accessible to your entire team. Think of automatically recognizing patterns in breakdowns or suggesting solutions based on previous cases.

A central knowledge hub. All that captured knowledge needs to end up somewhere everyone can easily access it. A digital knowledge base with powerful search functionality ensures that operators find exactly what they need – in their own language, at the moment they need it.

From paper to practice

For many manufacturing companies, the transition from paper logbooks and Excel sheets to a digital approach is a big step. But it's precisely that paper-based reality that causes fragmented insights and knowledge leakage. By giving operators a platform that feels like an extension of themselves – simple, fast, intuitive – you make sharing knowledge part of daily work.

At Oppr.ai, we help companies build exactly this bridge. By making knowledge capture as easy as taking a photo, and by using AI to enrich and make this information accessible, a living knowledge system emerges. Operators themselves become the best data source, and their expertise becomes a shared asset instead of personal capital.

Start today

Capturing unwritten knowledge doesn't have to be a big project. Start small: choose one process or one machine where a lot of knowledge is involved. Ask operators to record their observations and solutions via voice or photo for a week. You'll be amazed how many valuable insights surface.

Want to know how other manufacturing companies are successfully doing this? Let's look at how your team can also benefit from digital knowledge capture.