Knowledge is power, especially in industry
For European industry to remain competitive and sustainable it needs to recognise and preserve its unique knowledge. The EU-funded project project PASSAGE gathered five SMEs in the form of textile associations from Bulgaria, Greece, France, Italy and Romania to contribute to this goal. It took the textile industry as a case study of a domain under threat from global competition, developing an online platform to provide SMEs with relevant tools and guidelines. The platform was established to identify businesses' know-how, evaluate their importance, safeguard and strengthen them through improved management of their human resources. In more detail, the project team built an auto-diagnostic tool to outline SME business strategy and identify jobs affected by it. PASSAGE then developed a tool to evaluate know-how retained by the job positions in a company, building a database of job profiles and data on activities involved in performing these jobs. Achievements also include mechanisms to identify individuals that retain the most know-how and forecast how long they will remain in the company, as well as tools to capture and store their wisdom. The project's outcomes include guidelines, promotional materials, courses and questionnaires that help fulfil the project's aims. More about these achievements and outcomes can be accessed through the project website . PASSAGE can help address several key challenges that SMEs encounter in managing human resources. This includes reversing the loss of critical industrial know-how as employees retire and acquiring know-how to master new techniques and processes. The toolkit also helps improve employees' know-how in order to remain competitive and assists in transferring expertise to colleagues or partners. These solutions for preserving know-how could be useful not only for SMEs in the textile industry but for those in other sectors as well. This is particularly important since over the coming few years maintaining a professional, skilled and qualified labour force will be a major issue in thousands of European SMEs. With Europe's steadily ageing population, these tools to help document, preserve and transfer know-how couldn't have come at a better time.
