An article by Thomas Schierenberg, Senior Product Manager at Empolis.
His focus is on knowledge management systems in the SaaS environment. He is responsible for the strategic development and support of a cloud-based platform for structured knowledge organization in companies.
I grew up in the trades: I learned mechanical engineering, became a master craftsman and was later responsible for automation and production technologies in industry - and at some point studied business informatics on the side. Today, I help companies to make their experience available in such a way that everyone in the team is able to make better decisions. The effect: you get people out of their analog habits and into digital sovereignty - without overwhelming them. The decisive lever here? Consistent knowledge management.
Everyday life in the past: when maintenance becomes a paper chase
We are all familiar with the following situation: The machine operator calls maintenance as soon as there is a problem. The maintenance technician comes, looks, runs back to the office, rummages through folders and manuals and goes back to the machine. Error codes are researched, a piece of paper with old notes is found somewhere - in the end, you end up with the manufacturer's service department, try the phone, and if that doesn't help, a technician is scheduled. The result: downtime, double trips, frustration.
And all this while employees spend an average of 30-90 minutes a day searching for and collecting information - for every 100 people, this amounts to around €375,000 per year and up to 42 lost working days per person. These are real "costs of doing nothing" in service that nobody wants to bear.
Practical example 1 - When knowledge is directly at the machine
A new line, two machines, loaded by a robot using the chaos principle. The variants run wildly mixed, the cycle time is short.
One afternoon, the reject rate at station B suddenly increases. Instead of running to the office, poring over folders and contacting the manufacturer, the maintenance technician stays at the system: a scan of the QR code on the module opens the exact context of this station on the tablet, including the fault history, notes from similar cases and a checklist with the most important test steps.
The mobile application guides him step by step through camera calibration, gripper contact pressure and material position. Even if the hall reception is weak, the app continues to run offline. The results are directly documented, signed and saved. Best of all, in a similar case in the future, the intelligent search automatically suggests the most effective steps - because the system has learned what works.
Practical example 2 - When notes become reusable knowledge
In the past, when new machine programs were introduced, the real challenges only emerged in day-to-day operations: changing materials, new tools or dimensional deviations due to heat development. Colleagues recorded such observations in notebooks - valuable, but difficult to find when a similar job came along months later.
Today, these findings are recorded directly on the order or on the machine - a quick photo, two key points, done. Intelligent AI tools such as Knowledge Forge automatically embed the notes in a suitable template that provides the right structure depending on the type of information (e.g. tool adaptation, material deviation, setting parameters). This hardly costs the employees any time, but ensures that everything is documented in a uniform and comprehensible way.
And if something remains unclear, you simply start a problem-based chat in which the team finds a solution together - without stopping other machines. All the information collected is stored in the central knowledge base and can be called up again at any time in the future. In this way, knowledge gained from experience does not remain stuck in a notebook, but becomes a treasure that can be used by everyone.
Conclusion
Whether in service, production or quality management - intelligent knowledge management is the bridge between analog experiential knowledge and the digital future.
For me personally, it is the logical progression of my career: from wrench to digital assistant - with the aim of making knowledge available in such a way that everyone in the company can work faster, more safely and more independently.
