The Secret Ingredient Missing from Most ERP Implementations

Operational Reality: The Secret Ingredient

Early in my career, my father told me a story I never forgot.

He worked for a major jet engine manufacturer as a final test mechanic — decades ago, when nobody was winning any ISO audits.

Machine shops. Chemical stripping tanks. Plating operations. Tobacco smoke everywhere. Process control was more of a suggestion than a system.

One day, engines started failing final test.

Not one or two.

All of them.

For over three weeks, engineering and manufacturing tore the process apart trying to figure out what changed.

Nothing made sense.

Same materials.

Same drawings.

Same procedures.

Same equipment.

The only clue?

The failures started shortly after a longtime employee retired.

Eventually they brought him back into the plant and had him walk through the plating process he’d managed for decades.

He’s explaining the process step by step.

Then he casually leans over and spits tobacco juice into the plating tank.

The engineers just stood there.

Nobody reacted at first.

Because apparently… that’s what he’d done all day for 30 years.

Some trace chemical interaction from the tobacco had unknowingly become part of the process.

When he retired, the process changed.

Nobody knew.

Shipments stopped for weeks.

Sounds insane. But I’ve seen the modern equivalent inside companies doing $20M a year.

Not tobacco juice.

But undocumented tribal knowledge.

Workarounds.

Manual adjustments.

Little things operators do to keep production moving.

Leadership thinks the process is under control because there’s a binder somewhere.

But the real process only exists inside the habits of experienced employees.

And when they leave…

the business discovers what was never truly understood.

#OperationalReality

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