Reducing Dependence on “The One Person Who Just Knows” on the Manufacturing Line
How Indiana Furniture captured tacit operator knowledge to accelerate troubleshooting and training
Indiana Furniture partnered with Murray Mentor to capture critical tacit knowledge from experienced operators. Beginning with its most proprietary and complex manufacturing line, the team used Murray to digitize undocumented knowledge and SOPs, improve onboarding, and reduce downtime—completing the initial rollout in under one month and expanding to additional lines.
The Challenge: When Critical Knowledge Lives in People, Not Systems
Indiana Furniture is known for delivering reliable, design-friendly contract furniture with the speed and flexibility its dealer partners expect. Behind that consistency is a manufacturing operation supported by skilled operators who understand not just what to do, but why and when to do it—how processes behave under real production conditions, and how to respond when something doesn’t go as planned.
As leadership looked ahead, one risk became increasingly clear: much of this knowledge lived in people, not systems. When issues arose on the shop floor, the fastest path to resolution was often to track down the one person who “just knew”—along with the nuances that don’t appear in manuals or formal documentation.
As Chad Nord, VP of Operations at Indiana Furniture, put it plainly:
“The best experts are often the worst documenters.”
The Reality of Modern Manufacturing
At the same time, Indiana Furniture was navigating a familiar manufacturing reality:
Veteran operators nearing retirement
Newer employees entering the workforce with different expectations
Documentation that existed, but wasn’t always practical to use in the moment
As CEO Max Verkamp has said, static documentation alone no longer meets the needs of today’s workforce. Newer generations of workers don’t want to flip through binders, manuals, or navigate legacy screens when a problem arises—they expect to ask a question and get a relevant answer, in context, based on how their equipment and processes actually work.
What Indiana Furniture Needed
Indiana Furniture needed a way to:
Preserve deeply proprietary manufacturing knowledge
Reduce variability and improve process consistency without losing critical nuance
Train new operators without slowing production
Transfer knowledge in a format that fit real shop-floor workflows
Any solution also had to align with day-to-day manufacturing realities: practical, accessible, and immediately useful during operations.
The Solution: Capturing Tacit Knowledge with Murray Mentor
To support the transfer of tacit knowledge to the next generation of workers, Indiana Furniture selected Murray Mentor and became an early customer.
Starting with the Highest-Stakes Line
Indiana Furniture intentionally began with its most proprietary and most complex manufacturing line, an area where undocumented knowledge posed both the greatest risk and the greatest opportunity for impact.
This line contained a large amount of tacit knowledge critical to quality, uptime, and throughput, making it an ideal starting point for validating the approach.
The Implementation: Operators Leading Knowledge Capture
Indiana Furniture took a structured, operator-led approach to implementation:
Rapid knowledge capture
Experienced operators captured knowledge using Murray’s voice-based interface, describing processes and troubleshooting steps naturally.
Collaborative validation
Skilled experts worked together to review and refine captured knowledge to ensure accuracy.
SOP alignment and improvement
Existing SOPs were reviewed alongside captured tacit knowledge, uncovering procedures that were outdated, incomplete, or no longer optimal. This process also surfaced opportunities for improvement, creating the foundation for a more structured, continuous improvement (CI) approach to refining operating procedures.
Novice testing
Recently hired operators used Murray as a training and mentoring tool, serving as a final check that critical knowledge had been captured and was usable in practice.
The full initial implementation was completed in under one month, an unusually fast timeline for an AI-enabled system used by frontline operators in a live manufacturing environment.
What Murray Enabled
Using Murray’s voice-based interface, subject-matter experts were able to describe how work is actually done—how processes flow, how problems are diagnosed, and how issues are resolved in real operating conditions—without stopping to write formal documentation.
In a matter of days, Indiana Furniture captured a significant portion of previously undocumented tacit knowledge from experienced operators on the line.
Results: Faster Troubleshooting, Preserved Expertise
Operational Outcomes
The initial deployment delivered meaningful operational outcomes:
Accelerated progress toward process standardization
Identification and improvement of SOPs as an unintended but valuable benefit
Reduced dependence on locating veteran experts during issues
Faster troubleshooting and reduced downtime
Increased confidence that proprietary processes would be preserved as the workforce evolves
“Murray has provided us with a powerful tool to prepare for the inevitable future where decades of process and product experience will be retiring. With Murray, we have been able to accelerate our progress towards process standardization by lowering the barriers for capturing, retaining, recalling, and consuming knowledge of all types.”
— Chad Nord, VP of Operations, Indiana Furniture
An Unexpected Benefit: Unified Knowledge Sources
Beyond capturing tacit knowledge, Indiana Furniture found that Murray helped bring multiple sources of manufacturing knowledge into one usable experience, including:
Veteran operator expertise
Existing SOPs
Equipment documentation and customized machine usage
Process-specific safety and shutdown procedures
Rather than relying solely on manuals or static documentation, Indiana Furniture used Murray to reflect how equipment and processes are actually run on their shop floor—combining formal standards with real-world context.
Expanding Murray to Additional Manufacturing Lines
Indiana Furniture selected Murray for enterprise use and began rolling it out across multiple manufacturing lines, with a focus on:
Supporting newly hired operators
Bringing new machinery and equipment online more efficiently
Reducing downtime by enabling faster, in-context problem solving
Today, Murray functions as a digital mentor on the shop floor, helping ensure Indiana Furniture’s proprietary processes and hard-earned expertise remain accessible well into the future.
About Indiana Manufacturing
Indiana Furniture, headquartered in Jasper, Indiana, has been manufacturing office furnishings for over a century. The company is committed to delivering high standards of quality and craftsmanship, supported by reliable customer service. Through a culture of continuous improvement, flexibility, and the use of modern manufacturing technologies, Indiana Furniture produces a broad range of environmentally conscious office furniture at competitive price points. Learn more at www.IndianaFurniture.com.
Industry: Manufacturing
Sub-Vertical: Office Furniture
Employees: ~250
Location: Indiana, USA