Today’s world does not generally encourage long-term transfers of knowledge. The complexity of work, current staffing shortages and the constant drive for efficiencies has encouraged both the specialization and mobility of skills. Companies hire people for specific tasks as those tasks become necessary, and reduce staff when times are lean. On the flip side, employees with specialized skills are in high demand and career mobility is commonplace. To attempt to ensure that knowledge is not lost when an employee leaves the company, record keeping has become important for the long-term success of businesses. But does recording keeping result in knowledge transfer?
Data, Information, and Knowledge
There’s a big difference between the transfer of data, information, or knowledge. Data refers to raw information with little or no context and is easily transferrable. Information is data in context and would take more interpretation to transfer but it isn’t insurmountable. Knowledge, however, encompasses the application of that information. Knowledge is wisdom – transferring how to use the data and information is a much more complex process than simple data transfer.
From the reliability perspective, data would be the results of some condition monitoring activity (i.e, oil analysis results), information would be that data in the context of the historical data for that piece of equipment (i.e., historical oil analysis results), and knowledge would be the understanding of what to do with that information (i.e., the historical data combined with maintenance records, Root Cause Analysis reports, etc.). Record keeping tends to be very good at collecting data, only fair at retaining information, but tends to fail at transferring knowledge.
In the rush to keep the equipment running, record keeping of what was done may not be detailed. More importantly, the experience and knowledge of how to interpret the data and then determine what to do and why is rarely retained. When the person with the knowledge of what to do moves on (and these days, with a highly mobile workforce it is “when” and not “if”), it often becomes necessary to try to develop knowledge from data or information, consuming time and resources, without a guarantee of complete success.
Planning for Knowledge Transfer
To combat this, it is necessary for a company striving for success to not simply manage data or information (though this is important), but to plan for transferring knowledge from those who have it to those who do not. As with any planning exercise, goals must be defined and steps need to be followed. The goal in knowledge transfer in reliability is to have a competent and effective reliability team, capable of providing quantifiable results. The steps you need to follow include determining what data needs to be collected and how the data is to be retained (data management). Next, a process for interpreting the data in a consistent and repeatable manner must be established and documented, with a process for retaining and accessing the interpretations (information management). Finally, time must be spent with your current reliability personnel mentoring your new personnel to get them up to speed (knowledge transfer).
Depending on the complexity of the reliability functions at your company, the aptitude of the incoming personnel, and the mentoring skills of the existing reliability team members, it could take several weeks or months to get the new staff functioning at a proficient level. Without a deliberate, firm, and detailed plan, the complexity of the knowledge transfer process is likely to fail to some degree, costing you time, money, and reputation.
CARE: Improved Knowledge Transfer
By outsourcing your company’s reliability function to Fluid Life’s CARE (Condition Assessment & Reliability Evaluation) program, you engage a team of trained reliability specialists who work with you to establish the goals and metrics that are important to your bottom line. You have access to all of your information through our web-based myLab database which allows you to log maintenance events, establish lubrication routes, plan your analysis, and monitor the metrics you establish. You receive reliability alerts, warning you of potential issues in time to address them in a planned and deliberate manner rather than as crises.
Your Fluid Life CARE Specialist meets with you regularly to ensure that your reliability program is achieving the goals you have set. They will also immediately alerting you should anything need your immediate attention. Best of all, the CARE program is scalable, both up and down, to meet your ever-changing business needs. CARE becomes a part of your reliability team, but one that manages your reliability knowledge for you.
Leverage Fluid Life’s expertise and experience to achieve your reliability and profitability goals. Partner with reliability specialists who can offer you with observable and quantifiable reliability improvements in short order. Further, you can avoid the risk of losing your investment in training and developing new personnel and often at a cost significantly lower than the salary of a single skilled employee.
Contact a Fluid Life representative about the CARE Program today.