Two examples to add to the pot of lost knowledge.
1. Part of the reason that the US government wanted to keep building an unneeded
and grossly expensive submarine is that, otherwise, welders who know how to
do some tricky work would leave the business and would not be available to
train others. When the next subs are needed, in perhaps 20 years, nobody will
be able to weld them. Similar arguments were made about keeping the whole
production line 'warm', that the system has knowledge that can be maintained
with a trickle of activity, but can only be recaptured with major investment.
(I don't find either argument very convincing, but some credible people
think it is true.)
2. When they were building the Washington Cathedral they searched Europe for
stonemasons who knew the old tricks. Apparently there was a big effort to
transfer the skill and keep passing it on over the 50 years of construction.
Maybe the Wash Cathedral wasn't just being antiquarian by taking so long to
finish. They only had so many competent workmen, and it was worthwhile to
keep the crew going so that they would be available to train others in the
next generation.
Isn't it interesting that submarines are modern cathedrals. Skyscrapers
are built on a different schedule using standard, explicit knowledge.
Except that it was interesting that the makers of steel girders were frustrated
that the assemblers wouldn't assemble the girders according to the manner
described by the engineers -- the workers knew better and could make the
connections stronger, prettier, and faster, or so they thought. The
manufacturer decided that only a demonstration would convince the workers.
They made the workers do it their way, which they grumbled about but did.
Then they allowed the workers to pick their best men and make an identical
structure. Then both structures were crushed, and the workers' version
turned out to be criminally weak. (I think this was written up in
Scientific American.)
Kent Myers
--myersk@postoffice.sdf.sbis.com
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>