Organizational knowledge
Plain-language summary
Capture and protect the knowledge your business runs on — the recipes, fixes and customer quirks living in people's heads — and plan how to gain what you will need next.
What the clause is really asking
Determine the knowledge necessary for your processes and conforming product, maintain it, make it available, and when change comes (new tech, retirement of the old hand who knows everything) work out how to update and acquire what is missing.
What auditors look for
Auditors ask the succession question: if your toolroom veteran leaves tomorrow, where is what he knows? They look for captured knowledge (instructions, setup sheets, lessons-learned, masters/samples) and for any mechanism addressing knowledge at risk.
Typical evidence
Work instructions and setup sheets capturing know-how; lessons-learned files; mentoring/shadowing plans; critical knowledge risk assessment.
How to comply — recommendations
List your top ten single-person knowledge risks and run a capture plan: video the setup, write the one-pager, pair an apprentice. Crude beats absent — a phone video of the master setup is legitimate organizational knowledge.
Common nonconformities
Critical know-how in one head with no backup; setup 'documents' that are folklore; lessons learned from failures never written anywhere.
Related clauses
IATF 16949: applies unchanged
In the book
Chapter 7 — Support — People, Kit and the Truth About Documents treats this clause family in full: what it is really asking, what auditors look for, the evidence that satisfies, how to make it work on a real floor, and where companies stumble.
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