When expertise walks out the door: How to safeguard cost knowledge in manufacturing

Manufacturers are approaching a critical talent inflection point.

As McKinsey’s 2025 report, “Investing in the manufacturing workforce to accelerate productivity,” highlights, organizations across advanced industries are facing a mounting skills and productivity challenge. Many experienced workers are retiring, and the time it takes for new hires to reach full proficiency is growing, especially in complex roles like machining, welding, and cost estimation (Source: McKinsey, July 2025).

At the same time, manufacturing processes and product portfolios are becoming more intricate, amplifying the impact of knowledge loss on development cycles, cost accuracy, and operational performance.

The hidden cost of knowledge loss

In many companies, essential cost engineering knowledge remains undocumented relying on the experience of a few key individuals. When these employees leave, so does their institutional insight into historical benchmarks, supplier dynamics, and manual cost calculation methods. McKinsey notes that such performance gaps can lead to massive productivity disparities up to 800% between top and average workers in highly skilled roles (Source: McKinsey, July 2025).

This isn’t just a workforce issue. It’s a systemic operational risk.

Preserving institutional cost knowledge with Teamcenter Product Cost Management

This is where Teamcenter Product Cost Management (TCPCM) steps in, not merely as a costing solution, but as a strategic digital backbone for capturing, scaling, and retaining institutional knowledge.

By centralizing cost models, supplier data, material pricing, and historical project calculations, TCPCM helps organizations:

• Codify expert knowledge and make it accessible across teams and sites

• Reduce time to proficiency for new engineers and estimators through data-driven guidance

• Create consistent, repeatable, and auditable cost estimates early in the product lifecycle

• Minimize dependency on individual spreadsheets or isolated expertise

In line with McKinsey’s recommendation to reduce time to proficiency and institutionalize best practices, TCPCM helps organizations build resilience into their operations enabling scalable onboarding, cross-functional alignment, and knowledge retention even as teams evolve.

From risk to opportunity

At ET Advisory, we work with manufacturers facing exactly this transition. By implementing TCPCM, our clients have reduced reliance on retiring experts, preserved critical cost logic, and turned what could be a knowledge drain into a competitive advantage.

As the McKinsey report underscores, organizations that invest in workforce capability and structured knowledge systems see faster productivity gains and deliver stronger financial outcomes.

Final thought

The looming knowledge gap in manufacturing is real. But with the right systems in place, it doesn’t have to mean lost productivity. By embedding cost knowledge into digital platforms like Teamcenter Product Cost Management, manufacturers can safeguard their expertise, accelerate onboarding, and ensure consistency in a rapidly evolving landscape.