Series · What the science says

The knowledge that retires: what research quantifies

Manent — July 9, 2026

The best technician in your shop knows things that are in no manual. The day they retire, those things leave with them. This is not just an impression: it's a studied, quantified, and named phenomenon.

What research says

Researchers call it tacit knowledge: what an expert knows how to do without always being able to explain it, acquired through experience (Nonaka & Takeuchi, 1995, SECI model). The risk of losing it when the experts leave even has its reference book: Lost Knowledge (DeLong, 2004).

The figures are staggering. Nearly 40 % of the manufacturing workforce is said to be eligible to retire within the decade, and a Deloitte estimate reported in 2023 puts the loss of knowledge at ~$31.5 billion per year for large companies. The research also stresses one point: tacit knowledge transfers poorly through a simple document — it takes opportunities to capture it through conversation, question by question, case by case.

What we do at Manent

We designed the product around this finding: the real value is not in the manuals, it's in people's heads — and it escapes with every question left unanswered.

Every blind spot becomes a card. When the assistant doesn't have the answer, it doesn't just fail: it opens a structured field card (symptom, context, cause, verification, fix, result).
The conversation captures the tacit. A voice or written note from an experienced technician, in the field, becomes a candidate card — exactly the "transfer through conversation" that research recommends.
The expert validates, then it stays. Nothing is published without validation by one of your experts. Once validated, the card joins the knowledge base and answers everyone who follows — a person's knowledge becomes the company's knowledge.

The name says it: "Manent" comes from "verba volant, scripta manent" — spoken words fly away, written words remain. That is exactly the gesture: capturing what flies away before it is lost.

Honesty: these figures describe an industry-wide phenomenon, not a promise of returns. What Manent guarantees is the mechanism — capture, structure, get validated — so that knowledge stops leaving through the door.

References

Nonaka, I. & Takeuchi, H. (1995). The Knowledge-Creating Company. Oxford University Press (SECI model).
DeLong, D. W. (2004). Lost Knowledge: Confronting the Threat of an Aging Workforce. Oxford University Press.
Deloitte estimate (reported in 2023) on the annual cost of knowledge attrition; sector data on retirement eligibility in manufacturing.

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