20 May Making Manual Work Productive (...industrial engineering.)

[Paul Terlemezian]

We are now beginning a sequence that will get to the heart of the matter - Knowledge Worker Productivity.

 

Part of this will be to apply industrial engineering to the manual component of knowledge work. This will then free up the knowledge worker to apply their knowledge more efficiently.

 

The art of this effort will be to make the right decisions about what is knowledge work and what is manual work. Over time - more and more of the work will shift from knowledge to manual allowing the knowledge work to become more productive.

 

The GPS analogy fits well here. Prior to the GPS an individual had to do knowledge work when driving in a place they were not familiar. They asked directions, studied maps or went online to find information (they applied their skills to find knowledge and then stored/captured it for use while driving.) The GPS eliminated this knowledge work and replaced it with manual work of listening for when to turn the steering wheel. Eventually this may also be automated which will give the driver even more time to use their knowledge productively.

 

My implicit assertion is that unless you make a living by driving then it really is unproductive time.