Manufacturing organisations worldwide are confronting a critical, often overlooked threat: the gradual departure of irreplaceable expertise. This undocumented knowledge, deeply embedded within seasoned professionals, represents years of practical experience and forms the bedrock of efficient operations.
However, as key employees retire, resign, or move on, this 'tribal knowledge' often walks out the door with them, creating a significant "people risk". Failure to preserve this vital asset leads to continuity loss and hinders the ability of replacement staff to ramp up quickly. The urgency to act is paramount to avoid suffering severe consequences later.
In the complex environment of global manufacturing, critical functions like production planning, maintenance, and logistics are heavily reliant on the undocumented expertise held by long-tenured employees. This vital knowledge, sometimes termed 'tribal knowledge', is the practical know-how gained over years of hands-on experience.
The danger arises because this knowledge is typically not formalised or easily accessible to others. When these experienced professionals leave, their unique insights and problem-solving capabilities depart with them, risking substantial loss that directly impacts efficiency. This presents a major "focused pain point" for manufacturers: critical knowledge is trapped in people’s heads, and when they leave, that knowledge leaves too.
Several factors contribute to this predicament. One significant issue is siloed expertise, where critical knowledge is confined within isolated departments like engineering and R&D. This limits crucial knowledge sharing across the organisation, making it time-consuming to find the right expert when needed. Such delays can lead to Time to Market (TTM) delays.
Perhaps the most pressing challenge is the aging workforce. As experienced professionals retire, they take their critical, undocumented knowledge with them. This risks a substantial loss that directly impacts efficiency and potentially leads to unplanned downtime and slow problem resolution. To remain competitive, manufacturers must urgently address this gap.
Addressing these challenges requires a solution that can unlock and distribute the collective knowledge within an organisation. Manufacturers need to bridge human intelligence (HI) with artificial intelligence (AI) to ensure expertise is effectively captured, shared, and leveraged across the entire enterprise. The goal is to implement systems now to extract and preserve tribal knowledge, preventing continuity loss later.
Starmind is presented as one such AI-driven expertise solution designed to help companies, including leading manufacturers, optimise knowledge workflows. It works by analysing internal data sources, such as patents and ERP systems, to map expertise across the organisation.
Through this process, Starmind builds a dynamic knowledge graph, connecting organisational data and identifying industry-specific insights to create an evolving directory of knowledge that remains relevant and actionable.
This technology directly addresses the key issues faced by manufacturers. It quickly connects employees to experts to minimise repair time and reduce unplanned downtime. It bridges silos to facilitate faster collaboration and troubleshooting, accelerating slow problem resolution. Crucially, it helps preserve and share institutional knowledge, providing continuity and mitigating the risk of losing critical expertise due to the aging workforce.
By streamlining workflows and enhancing collaboration, Starmind helps manufacturers reduce downtime, optimise operations, and bring products to market faster. Leading manufacturers trust Starmind to unlock human intelligence within their organisations.
Consider the case of Roche, a global pharmaceutical leader with 100,000 employees worldwide. Roche faced significant challenges connecting subject matter experts across its numerous departments. Teams often struggled to find the precise expertise they needed, resulting in duplicated efforts, delayed decision-making, and consequently, delays in time to market for medical advancements.
Roche recognised the need for a smarter, faster method to harness their vast collective knowledge to achieve their ambitious goal of delivering medical progress at half the cost to society.
Starmind provided Roche with a comprehensive solution. Key components included an Embedded Q&A system that instantly connected employees with internal experts, effectively eliminating knowledge silos and reducing duplicated efforts. Starmind's enterprise search engine was also integrated into Google Cloud Search, providing employees with easier access to both information and specific experts.
Recognising Roche's global presence, the solution offered multilingual support, enabling seamless collaboration across international teams by allowing questions and interactions in multiple languages.
The results for Roche were significant. There was a substantial increase in internal usage, growing from 1,000 users in 2020 to nearly 9,000 users by 2023. This increased engagement translated directly into efficiency gains, with over 91,000 hours saved in searching time. This saving was quantified based on over 10,000 knowledge-based searches and 14,000 expert inquiries made through the system.
Furthermore, the platform successfully provided support across various geographies, with users able to ask questions in six languages: English, Chinese, German, French, Spanish, and Italian. Beyond Roche, other global companies like Mondelēz have also leveraged Starmind to accelerate R&D and Supply Chain problem-solving.
In conclusion, as seasoned professionals retire, the risk of losing critical tribal knowledge is real and impactful for manufacturers. Technologies powered by AI, like Starmind, offer a vital means to capture, share, and leverage this undocumented expertise. By mapping internal knowledge, connecting employees to experts, and preserving institutional memory, manufacturers can mitigate the risks associated with an aging workforce, reduce downtime, improve efficiency, and maintain a competitive edge.
The success at Roche demonstrates how such solutions can effectively unlock human intelligence across a large, complex organisation, accelerating progress and saving valuable time. The time to implement systems to extract and preserve this knowledge is now, before it's too late.
- By Jackson Hart, Rosie Perkins and Felix Mitrovics