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A Flexible Multimodal Methodology Based on INNODARE Platform’s Insight Development System, Structured Engineering Methods and AI-Enabled Enterprise Retrieval
Companies lose substantial value when experienced employees retire, change positions or leave, because important knowledge is not limited to formal procedures and documents. It also includes judgement, failure recognition, practical workarounds, causal explanations, design rationale, supplier and customer experience, and contextual knowledge about when standard methods do or do not apply. Recent research confirms that knowledge loss associated with turnover, generational change and employee withdrawal remains as an important organizational risk, while digitalization and collective knowledge-transfer mechanisms are becoming increasingly important. This article proposes a lightweight and flexible methodology for capturing such knowledge without creating a large administrative burden. The core principle is to capture knowledge through structured contributions made during normal engineering, operational, project and innovation activities. INNODARE Platform’s patent-pending Insight development methodology is used as a configurable capture layer in which organizations can define any subject, categories, questions, and contribution format, including text, tables, images, and other evidence. Depending on the application, the same mechanism can support lessons learned, problem solving, design reviews, supplier knowledge, customer knowledge, FMEA, HARA, process improvement and other domain-specific methods. Contributions are compiled into controlled PDF or Excel knowledge artifacts and stored in the company's existing document environment, such as SharePoint, a document-management system, QMS/PLM folders or secure file repositories. AI agents and/or chatbots then perform permission-aware retrieval, semantic search, summarization, cross-document synthesis, and expertise inference using authorship and contribution history. FMEA is presented as an important but non-exclusive knowledge-capture method because it systematically records functions, failure modes, effects, causes, controls and actions. The resulting architecture separates knowledge formation from document storage and retrieval, allowing organizations to retain their existing infrastructure while using INNODARE as a flexible knowledge-generation and intelligence layer
