Manufacturing runs on knowledge that rarely gets written down.
Deloitte and The Manufacturing Institute project that up to 1.9 million manufacturing jobs will go unfilled by 2033 as the aging workforce moves toward retirement, and Panopto’s YouGov research found that 42% of institutional knowledge exists with one person and no one else.
Manufacturing knowledge transfer is crucial for ensuring that valuable expertise is passed from experienced workers to new team members.
This guide walks through five practical steps to transfer manufacturing knowledge while the people who hold it are still on shift and build it into how you train everyone who comes next.
Inside the guide, you’ll find:
- A risk priority matrix to figure out which processes to capture first, based on what’s expensive to lose and what’s barely documented today.
- A video capture method with prompts that pull the reasoning out of experienced operators, not just the steps.
- A governance framework for keeping captured knowledge current, so outdated procedures stop circulating alongside approved ones.
- Real-world examples from ROCKWOOL and Toyoda Iron Works that show what this looks like at scale.