The average person in industry spends a significant part of their work time searching for knowledge on the plant. This knowledge is locked up in drawings, manuals and the head of another employee. Imagine the increase in productivity if searching time could become producing time.

Tom trained ten employees of a company on building a knowledgeabase on the company. A knowledgebase is an organized collection of what is known on a subject. In this case the subject was the industrial plant. He then helped them develop an organization for the knowlegebase. Over the next few years the trained employees populated the knowledgebase. When someone wanted a copy of the Emergency Response Plan, they scanned it into the knowledgebase. When someone needed a form, they scanned it and made it fillable. People starting looking in the knowledgebase first, saving time of the employee needing the material and the employee furnishing the material.

Maintenance scanned and organized drawings and manuals of all the equipment. When something broke, the drawings and manuals were as close as the nearest computer and found in seconds.

Human Resources placed all the policies in the knowledgebase. HR made all the forms fillable. The chances for math errors were minimized with the forms. HR needed a way to assure an employee was competent to perform a new job function. The forms and multimedia capabilities in Acrobat made fantastic self grading tests.

Product designs from the beginning of the company were scanned and organized to assist clients in procuring replacement parts. The person working with the client could have drawings in seconds.

The employees have developed forms for routine inspections that load the database. This has eliminated manually entering the data into the database.

As time is saved, more time is available for production.