Organizational knowledge

In plain words

This clause — new to the standard in 2015 — treats your company’s knowledge as a resource, just like people and machines. What is demanded: determine which knowledge you need to deliver your products and services; maintain that knowledge and make it available; and when looking at changes, check whether knowledge will be missing — and how you will get it.

What is meant is not the knowledge found in books, but yours: the tricks on the difficult machine, the quirks of the key customer, the solution found on the last tricky order, the feel for when a process is about to tip. The knowledge that walks out the door with a person, if nobody wrote it down or passed it on.

For small companies this is perhaps the most important clause of this chapter — and the most underestimated, because its biggest risk is invisible until it strikes.

Why this requirement exists

The reason stands in almost every small company’s context sheet: the decisive knowledge sits in a few heads. The one who can still set up the old machine; the one who knows why this customer dimensions their drawings so strangely. If that person leaves — retirement, resignation, illness — the knowledge leaves too, and suddenly things take three times as long or go wrong.

The clause forces this risk to be named before it strikes. It is the organizational level of the same thought that appears in the context (4.1) as the “knowledge monopoly” and can stand in the quality policy (5.2) as “knowledge belongs to the team, not to individual heads”. 7.1.6 is where that insight becomes action.

What good looks like

In a company of 12 people this does not mean a “knowledge management system”, but a few effective habits. The critical knowledge is named: the risk overview (6.1) or the context notes which knowledge hangs on individual people. For that knowledge there is a plan: a second trained person, a short documentation of the tricks (setup sheets, process notes, a customer file with the quirks), the buddy principle at onboarding. New knowledge is captured: the solution from the tricky order lands as a note, not only in the head of whoever found it.

Good does not mean “write everything down” — that smothers and goes stale. Good means: the few critical knowledge islands are secured against the loss of one person, and there is a way for experience to stay in the house. The best evidence is a survived emergency: when X left or was out, things kept running, because the knowledge did not sit with X alone.

What changes as you grow: From around 50 people, structured onboarding paths, a wiki or handbook with the process knowledge, and conscious succession planning for key roles emerge. From 100–250 people, communities of practice, lessons-learned processes and competence matrices join. The core remains at every size: no single departure may make the company stumble.

The minimum to pass

• The critical knowledge is determined — it is recognisable which knowledge is essential for your products/services and where it sits.
• There is a recognisable handling of the loss risk — onboarding, documentation, deputies, the buddy principle; not everything, but something for the critical islands.
• New knowledge becomes accessible — experience flows back into documents, templates or the handbook instead of staying only in heads.
• With changes (a departure, a new process), the knowledge gap is considered — the link to 6.3 and 7.2.

What an auditor asks for

• In conversation: “What happens if your most experienced machinist stops tomorrow?” — the answer shows instantly whether 7.1.6 is lived or claimed.
• The link to context/risk: does the knowledge monopoly appear in 4.1 or 6.1, and is there an action on it?
• Concrete safeguards: setup and process sheets, customer files, an onboarding programme, deputy rules (5.3).
• A survived emergency: a role that kept running despite a staff change — the strongest evidence imaginable.
• Whether experience flows back: is the solution to a problem captured (the improvement loop, 10.3)?

Common traps

• Wanting to document everything. The reflex to write down every hand movement produces dead binders and smothers the work. What is asked for is the critical knowledge, not all of it.
• Tolerating the knowledge monopoly. “Klaus has been doing that for 20 years” is comfortable — until Klaus leaves. The most common unresolved 7.1.6 risk in small companies, and usually long visible in the context sheet without anyone acting.
• Confusing knowledge with competence (7.2). 7.2 is whether the individual person can do what they do. 7.1.6 is whether the company keeps the knowledge when the person goes. Related, but not the same.
• Documentation nobody maintains. A setup sheet not updated since the new machine is more dangerous than none — it misleads (see the 6.3 story).
• Onboarding without handover. The new person “runs along”, but nobody ensures the knowledge actually transfers. Without a conscious handover, the monopoly persists.
• Only talking, never capturing. The knowledge circulates orally and evaporates with every departure. A minimum of capturing makes the difference.

Worked example

At Berger Präzisionsteile GmbH, 7.1.6 is not an abstract topic but the red thread of several chapters. The knowledge monopoly stands in the context (4.1: “quality knowledge concentrated in few heads”) and as a risk in 6.1 (“only one person knows the 5-axis programs”). The quality policy makes it a principle (“knowledge belongs to the team”). And 7.1.6 is where action happens: one annual objective (6.2) reads “onboarding for two successors in place”, implemented through the buddy principle and documented setup and program sheets.

The emergency came unplanned: the most experienced machinist was out for six weeks (an accident, private). Because the second person was already half trained at that point and the setup sheets for the critical orders existed, production kept running — slower, but without standstill and without a quality dip. Exactly this survived emergency, told in the certification audit, was more convincing than any knowledge database could have been. (As a reminder: the same audit also found the flip side through the outdated setup sheets — documented knowledge must be maintained, or it misleads. Both sides belong to 7.1.6.)

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