Lean Knowledge Management

Preface

I have always had a love for history and majored in it at Georgetown University, despite my father’s warnings that I’d never find a decent job. Several years after graduating, and after not being able to find a decent job, I decided to start all over and applied at NASA as an apprentice mechanic. I spent the next decade learning how to use a lathe, torque wrench, TIG welder, and bend tubing while going to night school to earn an engineering degree, yet history remained my first love.

I spent 38 years working at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. After starting as an apprentice mechanic at the Lewis Research Center (now the Glenn Research Center) in Cleveland, Ohio, I ended my career as the agency’s chief knowledge officer ...