{"id":11356,"date":"2026-03-10T11:59:16","date_gmt":"2026-03-10T10:59:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/elicitonline.com\/you-have-the-experts-but-do-you-have-the-knowledge\/"},"modified":"2026-09-09T13:20:43","modified_gmt":"2026-09-09T11:20:43","slug":"you-have-the-experts-but-do-you-have-the-knowledge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/elicitonline.com\/en\/you-have-the-experts-but-do-you-have-the-knowledge\/","title":{"rendered":"You have the experts, but do you have the knowledge?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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You have the experts, but do you have the knowledge?<\/h1>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n\n <\/path>\n<\/svg><\/span>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n
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You have fifteen operators on the floor. Three of them have been working there for more than twenty years. And yet, the line comes to a standstill as soon as that one operator\u2014let’s call him Jan\u2014is not there. How is that possible, with all that experience on the floor? And how do you solve it? You are likely looking in the wrong place. <\/mark><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

The assumption that leads you astray<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

The idea is that a knowledge deficit is a quantity problem. You simply need to hire more experienced people, have more manuals, organize more training days, and implement more job shadowing. But there is a fundamental difference between someone who knows a lot and someone who can decide<\/strong>. And as long as you do not recognize that difference, you will not solve the problem. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

What an expert actually possesses<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Over the years, a good operator builds up something for which no manual exists: decision logic. This logic arises from actions performed intuitively, without conscious thought. Consider a combination of sounds and smells that he monitors subconsciously, or a pattern he recognizes before it causes a production stop. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHe just feels it,\u201d colleagues will say. But what they actually mean is that the operator sees cause-and-effect relationships that have never been made explicit or written down. It is not just knowledge; it is a professional intuition\u2014fingerspitzengef\u00fchl\u2014that develops through experience. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cHe just feels it,\u201d colleagues will say. But what they actually mean is that the operator sees cause-and-effect relationships that have never been made explicit or written down. <\/h4>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
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Why more people do not solve the problem<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

No matter how well you train them, new employees lack that decision logic. They know the procedure and the steps, but not the reasoning behind the decisions. And what about attracting experienced people? If you are lucky enough to find someone with twenty years of experience, they bring their own decision logic with them. Not the logic specific to your line, machine, or product. It takes years before someone truly masters the nuances of a specific process. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The solution is not finding new experts; it is making the deep-seated knowledge of the experts you already have transferable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Documentation is not enough<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Many organizations recognize this risk and start working on documentation. You ask the expert to describe their work. They do their best and write down what they do. The result: a procedure that describes how the line runs under normal conditions. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

What is missing: what they do when things do not run normally. Which signals tell them that something is about to go wrong. How they assess in two seconds whether a deviation is a minor adjustment or justifies a production stop. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is not a lack of will. Experts work intuitively. They cannot write down their decision logic because they have never made it explicit themselves. Consequently, operators still get stuck at decisive moments because the manual does not help them further. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cWith ELICIT, we discovered that we could capture the overload of information Pieter possesses in a practically applicable way.\u201d<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Arthur van Esveld, Production Manager CONO<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

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How that looks in practice<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

But capturing decision logic from years of experience in just a few interviews? That sounds too simple to be true. Understandable. However, an expert’s decision logic is more manageable than it seems. Research based on more than 200 expert interviews shows that the average knowledge profile consists of approximately 20 parameters and 72 instructions. That is recordable and transferable. But only if you ask the right questions\u2014not \u201cdescribe your work,\u201d but \u201chow do you decide?\u201d. By subsequently capturing that knowledge as practically applicable information, operators can rely on expert knowledge at any time. Whether \u2018Jan\u2019 is there or not. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One question<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Looking at your organization now, ask yourself one honest question: do you need more experts? Or have you simply never truly captured the knowledge of the people who are already there? Most production managers we speak with already know the answer. Do you? Schedule an introduction<\/a> and we will explain what we can do for you. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n\n <\/path>\n<\/svg><\/span>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

You have the experts, but do you have the knowledge? You have fifteen operators on the floor. Three of them have been working there for more than twenty years. And yet, the line comes to a standstill as soon as that one operator\u2014let’s call him Jan\u2014is not there. How is that possible, with all that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11357,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[84],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11356","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blogs"],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":8}},"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/elicitonline.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11356","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/elicitonline.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/elicitonline.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elicitonline.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elicitonline.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11356"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/elicitonline.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11356\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11359,"href":"https:\/\/elicitonline.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11356\/revisions\/11359"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elicitonline.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11357"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/elicitonline.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11356"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elicitonline.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11356"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elicitonline.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11356"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}