👤 Alnis Podneiks — The archetype of deep tacit knowledge gained through decades of experience at Gemba.

Nationality: Latvian Australian

Background: Trained in disciplined European manufacturing environments.

Narrative Interest: Alnis represents process integrity and the collision point between strategy and machinery.

We meet Alnis in Learn, Transform, and Navigate when Sam is doing how-round in the manufacturing plant. The plant, all the machines, and the equipment are Alnis’s home. This is where he has worked for decades installing, maintaining and running the equipment. He has developed deep tacit knowledge of how it works, and to him, it is like a living being. He is totally attuned to every nuance, even the weakest signals, and he knows exactly what each item’s capabilities are. He is conscious of what he calls the ‘memory of steel’, the operational life of each item and where and how it is aging.

Alnis can work through with five fitters and engineers, and as they walk under an overhead conveyor, he is the only one who hears a slight change in the noise it produces. He knows that the very slight tell-tale squeak is the sound of a bearing near the end of its life. He will stop the line for two hours to replace the bearing, knowing full well that if it has failed, they would have a mess to clean up and many days of lost production. That’s Alnis, the steward of steel.