How to Reduce Tribal Knowledge and Downtime with Dozuki Answers

The conveyor belt on line one stopped running and production came to a halt. It was the second time in a week that this happened. The maintenance team and engineers spend the next 48 hours trying to determine what caused the issue. As it turns out, the downtime was due to a frayed wire that caused the conveyor to lose power.

A month later the resolved issue resurfaces in another plant.

This time, 72 hours passed before the root cause was discovered. 72 hours of waste.

Two plants experiencing the same issue, both using precious engineering time to come to independent conclusions.

Knowledge as a Group Asset

This scenario plays out every day in companies around the world. When communication, between teams, shifts, or locations becomes isolated, companies waste valuable time, solving problems again...and again. Best practices are left siloed, rather than shared as ways to improve efficiency.

On the factory floor, it’s common to document training and process knowledge. But when it comes to problem-solving, little has been done to share information in a way that helps entire organizations.

Challenges of Knowledge Sharing

Isolated Problem Solving Techniques

86% of employees and executives cite lack of collaboration or ineffective communication for workplace failures. Employees have untapped experience, waiting to be leveraged.

Inability to Capture Knowledge of Experienced Employees

70% of employees take their knowledge with them when they retire. Experienced workers accumulate vast knowledge banks, but that hasn’t been documented anywhere to share with others.

No Centralized Knowledge Hub

82% of employees say that navigating multiple systems to find information hurts their productivity. Not only is a lack of real-time problem solving inefficient, but it restricts collective brainpower to a select few.

Introducing Dozuki Answers

We are proud to announce a tool that will help manufacturers address the challenges of distributing knowledge — Dozuki Answers.

After collecting feedback from thousands of employees across all levels of manufacturing organizations, we developed a platform within Dozuki that will enable companies to:

 - Solve problems in real-time

 - Leverage the expertise of experienced employees

 - Build a searchable repository of common problems and solutions

Solve Problems in Real-Time

When the solution to a production problem requires the expertise of employees across roles, departments, or shifts. Getting the problem in front of the right people typically takes hours or even days.

Dozuki Answers helps companies share problems quickly and request the expertise of specific subject matter experts. Problems are solved in minutes rather than days.

Employees can post a question or problem, associate it with a production line, workstation, or piece of equipment, and request assistance from specific employees or internal experts.

Collaborate Quickly

When an employee is mentioned in the description, an instant email and in-app notifications are sent to the employee that their expertise has been requested.

Get Knowledge Out of the “Tribe”

Questions and problems posted in Dozuki Answers are open conversations. Unlike email where only the included employees can contribute, Dozuki Answers allows expert employees to chime in and lend their knowledge—helping your company solve problems faster!

To ensure the highest quality replies are the first to be seen, employees tag it as helpful. Once a solution is agreed to, it can be accepted and marked as the best solution.

Build a Repository of Common Problems and Solutions

Dozuki Answers acts as a central location for the unstructured, one-off questions and solutions that live in the heads of experienced employees. It helps companies tap into collective knowledge to resolve problems faster and permanently.

Employees can search for specific keywords or browse categories to see if a similar question has already been asked. This information is available across the company—even those at different locations.

Start leveraging the expertise of your workforce today, schedule a demo to see how Dozuki Answers can help your organization.