Humans are uniquely good at that and these competencies can be purposefully developed even further. So a competent professional has experienced no more than a few knowledge turns, while a master has certainly experienced many. Design leverages manufacturing profitability even more than production. The ability of a company to produce new designs reliably and rapidly hinges on the rate at which it can acquire new knowledge. Knowledge comes through experimentation.
New knowledge is acquired through new experiences.
So the more product cycles you can work through in a year, the greater your experience base. So if we call the knowledge you acquire and exercise in the course of one complete product implementation cycle a knowledge turn, we ll find that maximizing knowledge turns per unit of time can be a corollary of profitable manufacturing and incidentally, of happy and successful engineers. Peter acknowledges earlier use of knowledge turns by respected consultant Charles Savage, but points out that Savage s keen insight into knowledge turns as a ratio of trust and distrust within an organization may be too intangible for action by manufacturing professionals. Rather, Peter suggests that we count as one turn the full cycle of specialized contribution by a professional, from problem analysis and solution to product realization. Peter says, Increasing knowledge turns in the new economy is as good a goal as increasing inventory turns was in the past.