Recently while having new floorcovering installed at our house, my husband was watching the young apprentice spread glue on the floor ready to lay the planks.
What is Tacit Knowledge?
My husband commented to the experienced floor coverer, who was supervising ‘that would be a hard skill to teach as you can’t write it down in a procedure’.
This is what we call tacit knowledge which is the kind of knowledge that is difficult to transfer to another person by writing it down or simply just verbalizing. It takes practice, time and experience to master.
This lead me to think about the new ISO 9001:2015 requirement of Organizational knowledge (clause 7.1.6). This clause states that ‘the organization shall determine the knowledge necessary for the operation of its processes and to achieve conformity of products and services’. Note 1 in this clause states ‘organizational knowledge is knowledge specific to the organization; it is generally gained by experience. It is information that is used and shared to achieve the organization’s objectives’.
Let’s break this down:
- determine the knowledge necessary for the operation of its processes and to achieve conformity of products and services
Knowledge can be a very broad statement with areas of knowledge being quite different across varying organizations and even within organizations. This is why each organization is to determine the necessary knowledge required to ensure that customer requirements are being met and maintained.
Essentially what do the people working within a process need to know to be able to produce the correct result. And notice here the term determine rather than document – although in larger organizations this will tend to be written down.
- knowledge specific to the organization
This knowledge may be defined from core business processes through to management and system processes, with a risk-based approach to the continuity of supplying products and services to the customer.
Whilst some of this “knowledge“ will be the same for similar organizations - taking the example of the floor coverer mentioned earlier all floor covers will need the same knowledge to measure the floor area - there may be specific knowledge for some processes, such as taking orders and customer follow up, which separates that business from its competitors.
- it is generally gained by experience
Again, tacit knowledge, which is gained from experience and is difficult to transfer. As stated in ISO 9001 this experience can be gained from internal and external sources and could include:
- previous successful products/projects
- previous product nonconformances
- apprenticeships
- mentoring
- improvements in processes
- industry standards
- conferences
- customer feedback
- supplier feedback
Taking this into consideration you can see how the ongoing knowledge of our young apprentice floor coverer under the guidance of the experienced supervisor ensures that the knowledge specific to the organization, necessary for the operation of its processes to achieve conformity of products and services is being undertaken.
Image courtesy of Choices Flooring Capalaba
