Some of the most valuable knowledge in a business shows up only when an experienced person is doing the job. A master on the shop floor knows the setup by feel, and nobody has ever written it down because nobody needed to.
Friedrich Steininger, managing director of DE software & control GmbH, a company specialized in software for production and AI-supported shopfloor systems, decided that knowledge deserved a better route to the next generation. He started an initiative called BoomerZ.
What DE software & control GmbH did
BoomerZ pairs two generations at work. Younger employees use AI to document the experience of older colleagues. In the example Steininger gives in his January 2026 sponsored post, an apprentice films an experienced industrial master during a complex setup task. AI then turns the footage into an editable document with video sequences, explanatory text and action steps, which the article calls a digital textbook from lived practice.
From there the material becomes structured instructions, checklists or tutorials for new employees. Steininger puts the idea this way, in our translation: "We cannot stop demographic change, but we can prevent knowledge from disappearing and employees from losing touch with AI." The post is written by the company itself and reports no measured results, and it does not say where BoomerZ is already in use.
What it already gives the business
The design is simple and cheap to try. The senior person keeps doing the work, the junior person does the recording and the AI does the first draft of the manual. Each side brings something the other lacks, which Steininger sums up as: "We talk about generations too often and with each other too rarely."
The post lists expected gains in general terms, such as shorter onboarding for new employees and less dependence on individual key people. Those are the company's own expectations and remain to be measured.
The ExValu perspective, a hypothesis
Where a Company Brain could take it next
A filmed setup shows how a job is done. The next layer is why: which signs tell the master to adjust, which customer orders need extra care, which shortcuts are safe and which are not.
A Company Brain could link each filmed procedure to those reasons and to the machines and orders it applies to, so every new hire can search the whole body of shop floor experience instead of one video at a time. That is our hypothesis, and the source does not describe it.
What an owner and a buyer would look for
Track how many core tasks have a filmed and approved procedure, how long new hires take to work alone and how often seniors are still called to the machine.
A buyer of a production business asks what happens when the masters retire. A library of approved procedures, with a named owner and review dates, answers that question with evidence. Video of employees is personal data, so record only with their agreement, for training purposes only, and set a retention period.
The problem behind this case
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About this analysis
* The image is AI-generated and does not show DE software & control GmbH staff. The facts and figures on this page come from the published source named below.
This is an independent ExValu analysis of a published case. Facts, figures and names are as reported in the source below, which our team checked on October 14, 2026. The ideas for next steps are our own perspective and make no claim about conditions inside DE software & control GmbH. To request a correction or removal, write to [email protected]. Quotes from the German-language source are translated by our team.
Primary source: Sponsored post written by the company, Markt und Mittelstand, January 2026. Available at www.marktundmittelstand.de/firmen-news/zwei-generationen-ein-auftrag-mit-ki-gegen-den-wissensverlust.