Capturing know-how before it retires
By far the subject that comes up most when I walk into a plant. An experienced operator retires, and with them go years of hands-on skills no one ever wrote down. There are work instructions, of course, but between what the methods engineer meant to write and what the newcomer understands well enough to reproduce, there’s a gulf. The most precious knowledge on a site is the kind that sits on no sheet of paper.
The problem isn’t the manual, it’s the gesture
A written procedure lists a sequence of steps. It doesn’t show the hand turning the valve a certain quarter-turn, the ear that recognizes a tiring pump, the glance that spots “something’s off.” That knowledge is tacit: it’s in the hands, not in the words. That’s why fat training binders stay closed and newcomers learn “on the job,” depending on who happens to be free to guide them.
Film the gesture, let AI structure it
The approach I deploy is simple to grasp: we film the expert performing the operation and narrating it, with a camera close to the gesture. Then AI re-cuts the video into clear steps and drafts the work instruction, with light human review. From a single recording you get an illustrated procedure and a short video, filed in an indexed library, a kind of internal “Netflix” of know-how.
A newcomer who manages alone
The value shows the day a newcomer, alone in front of a machine, types what they’re looking for and lands straight on the right sequence. You can go further: adapt the format to the person (some operators don’t read a standard written procedure the same way) and reuse the video for another site, in another language. The know-how no longer leaves with the person: it stays in the company, available at the right moment.
Where AI stops
Let’s be clear: AI produces the material and tracks who saw what, useful in a dispute. But it doesn’t replace your legal responsibility to train and certify. A 100% automatic training doesn’t hold up: you need a human expert to validate the certification. We augment the trainer, we don’t remove them.
For the full picture, read the guide AI in industry. See also: Inspection robots in the plant. Wondering where to start? Gauge your AI maturity in 2 minutes, or let’s talk for 20 minutes.