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Tribal Knowledge By Bill Tobin ‘Tribal Knowledge’ is kind of a weird term to use in the plastics industry but it is more than accurate. If you were to start a company where would you find the knowledge to avoid the most basic of mistakes? Hence the ‘tribe’. There is a fantastic amount of acquired knowledge that has been gained through experience and mistakes made over the years by those who have been ‘in the business’. Contrary to many people’s beliefs there is very little that is proprietary about any of the plastics manufacturing processes. New companies don’t have the time or money to acquire the knowledge in a hit or miss fashion. The machine manufacturers tend to tell you how to operate the machine but not now to optimize your process. The resin companies talk about ideal processing conditions but still don’t give you too many specifics on how to run profitably. The textbooks tend to either be too theoretical or over simplified. But the new ventures that tend to hire people with experience (tribal knowledge), tend to succeed better than those who are completely new to the technology. Can you beat the off shore migration of business? It only takes a bit of cooperation so that we all can be more competitive. Recently we’ve seen a dramatic collapse of the tribes (professional societies). Membership is down and many companies don’t see any reason to participate because the question “What’s in it for us?” is left unanswered. However those small chapters that are still surviving make presentations to their members sharing this wealth of tribal knowledge. Telling people a custom made screw will improve outputs isn’t giving away your competitive edge. Making a presentation where you show the costs and benefits will motivate others to follow your lead. Having a dinner presentation of the varieties of ways to gate a part, complete with in-mold automatic degating mechanisms, is really showing people existing technology that otherwise would have to be re-discovered by those who have never done it. Teaching the ‘Joeys” (the new kids) the basics of design and processing is always in everyone’s best interest. These presentations must be experiential and not sales pitches from suppliers. Our professional societies need to be overhauled to rekindle this sense of community. Processors need to look at each other the way car dealerships do – They provide a product but there is room for everyone because buyers always customize their cars with accessories. Almost everyone in the plastics business specializes. Two molders will differentiate themselves by what they do well. One might specialize in clear materials while the other in high temperature engineering resins. While both are molders and both might be on common quotation lists, they really don’t compete with each other. Recognizing this is where they could help each other. In the Internet Age professional societies will probably morph into virtual entities. Many consultants are posting some of the basics in tribal knowledge on their websites for those to either download or use at will. Webinars can at best only cover a single (simplified) topic because the interaction between the presenter and the audience is too time limited. History has shown us that the loss of the tribe is the loss of the accumulated knowledge that caused it to prosper in the first place. Think how far we would be now if we hadn’t destroyed some of history’s great cultures and wasted decades trying to rediscover what previously was common knowledge. In today’s environment we can either try to succeed together or separately. What we do is up to us. Industry veteran Bill Tobin is president of WJT Associates, a company he founded in 1975 to provide design and project engineering consultation on mechanical designs, specification of tolerances, manufacturability part and machine costing, governmental and agency regulatory compliance, budgets and profitability improvement. The company also provides expert witness testimony. www.wjtassociates.com Phone: 303 604 9592
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