Institutional memory and reverse smuggling

https://landley.net/history/mirror/institutional_memory.html

I worked for several decades at a large petrochemical company. In the early 1980s, we designed and built a plant that refines some hydrocarbon type stuff into other hydrocarbon type stuff. Over the next thirty years, institutional memory of this plant faded to a dim recollection. Oh, it still operates, and still makes money for the firm. Day to day maintenance is performed, and the skilled local crew is familiar with the controls, valves, safety systems, and other such.

But the company has forgotten how it really works.

In the late 2000s, the company remembered that this plant existed, and thought about doing something with it. Specifically, increase output by debottlenecking one unit, and doing a feasibility study on addition of a second unit.

Now they had a problem. How was it built? Why was it built like that? How does it work?

It falls to some of the then-younger engineers, now the senior cohort, to dig up documentation. This is less like institutional memory and more like institutional archaeology.

Worth reading in its entirety.

Progress is not certain, only the continuous effort of groups of people keeps it going.

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