Introduction

In 1990, just after the unification of Germany, Fraunhofer IPK started two research projects partly funded by the German Federal Ministry of Research and Technology, with companies, universities and research institutes from both parts of Germany.2 The aim of the projects was to discover and to describe the tacit knowledge of skilled mechanical workers, to develop processes and the task environments and technical prototypes to support the creation, sharing and use of tacit knowledge and to implement and test these solutions with the workers on the shop floor. With the introduction of CNC-Machines in the mechanical workshops, experienced and highly skilled workers often felt insecure about their ability to control the process. They missed the ‘right sound’ of the metal and the ‘good vibrations’ of the machine. These signals were absorbed by the new CNCMachines and hence workers were not able to activate their tacit knowledge in order to produce high quality products. Within a second project3 we observed similar problems with the introduction of other CIM-Technologies, such as CAD/CAM in the design and the process-planning department and with MRP systems for order management. The information supply chain could not fully substitute the informal knowledge transfer chain between the different departments.