Securing Knowledge as a Competitive Advantage:
How Companies Translate Human Experience into Digital Processes
Experienced specialists are the most valuable asset for industrial companies, but their retirement means that critical knowledge is at risk of being lost. Friedrich Steininger, Managing Director of DE software & control GmbH, has taken on this challenge: “We cannot stop demographic change. But we can prevent the loss of experiential knowledge with every specialist who leaves.”
The core problem is not a lack of documentation, but its limitations. While work instructions and quality management manuals describe how processes should run, they do not explain why experienced employees act in a certain way in complex situations. This implicit decision-making knowledge, e.g. pattern recognition, contextual understanding, and the ability to manage deviations, is what makes production processes resilient and ensures high quality.
From Implicit to Explicit Knowledge
The BoomerZ project fundamentally transforms this approach. Instead of documenting knowledge only shortly before retirement, it is made visible during day-to-day work. Experienced employees are shadowed, their work steps are documented, and their decision-making logic is specifically captured. Through AI-supported structuring, individual experience is turned into a shared, systematic body of knowledge: processed, understandable, and usable by other employees.
With the DE-instruct platform, even videos from mobile phones can be turned into digital work instructions, which are available in any language through instant translation and can be seamlessly integrated into existing software structures.
Knowledge at the Point of Decision
The immediate availability of knowledge is crucial for practical success. Intelligent worker assistance systems like workstAItion 5.0 access this established knowledge base and provide employees with the precise, context-specific information they need for their current task. This means that experience, background information, and decision-making aids supplement standard work instructions and, in turn, new insights from practical application flow back into the knowledge base.
The effects go far beyond mere knowledge transfer: faster onboarding processes, a reduced burden on experts, improved process quality, and increased business resilience.
AI as an Enabler, Not a Replacement
Steininger emphasises a key point: AI does not replace human experience — it makes it accessible. The competitive advantage of the future lies not just in the digitalisation of machinery, but in the systematic preservation and accessibility of human experience. Only when individual expertise becomes shared process knowledge can people, digital assistance systems, and artificial intelligence collectively unleash their full potential.
You can read the article here (German): Wie aus Erfahrungswissen nutzbares Prozesswissen wird
