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POKA, EZ GO, ManualMaster and ELICIT: What’s the difference?

Knowledge management tools all promise the same thing: capturing knowledge, supporting operators, and speeding up training. But how do they actually differ? And which problems do they solve for you? We discuss three well-known solutions, POKA, EZ GO, and ManualMaster, and compare them with ELICIT.

First: the different types of “knowledge”

There are two fundamentally different types of knowledge in a factory: Explicit knowledge is what you can write down. Work instructions, checklists, ISO procedures, step-by-step manuals. This knowledge already exists. It’s just not yet digitalized or is scattered across folders and systems.

Experiential knowledge is what lives in the heads of your best people. The decision rules a senior operator applies in a split second: “If the temperature behaves like this and the sound is like that, I do this.” This is written nowhere. It has never been documented. And it’s exactly the knowledge that disappears when someone retires.

It is important to determine which type of knowledge you want to capture. This determines which knowledge management tool is right for you.

ManualMaster: when compliance and document management are your priority

ManualMaster is a Quality Management System designed for organizations that need to maintain ISO certifications, require audit trails, and want control over document versions. Think of pharmaceutical companies, food safety environments, and manufacturing companies with strict compliance requirements.

What it does well: managing procedures, version control, facilitating audits, CAPA workflows.

When should you choose it? If your primary challenge is compliance, document management, and ISO processes. Not if your goal is to prevent experiential knowledge from leaving when an expert departs.

EZ GO: when you want to move from paper to digital

EZ GO (formerly EZ Factory) helps factories transition from paper-based checklists and SOPs to digital work instructions. It is mobile-first, user-friendly, and co-developed with operators on the shop floor.

What it does well: digitizing paper forms, supporting 5S audits, making standard operator tasks accessible. In short: EZ GO makes existing instructions accessible. It does not extract expertise that still resides in people’s heads.

When should you choose it? If your shop floor is still largely paper-based and you want to move towards digital standardization.

Poka: when you are looking for a broad connected worker platform

Poka (now part of IFS) is an enterprise platform for the digital workplace in manufacturing. It offers work instructions, communication tools, skill tracking, forms, and analytics. Large organizations such as Nestlé, Bosch, and Danone use it.

What it does well: distributing existing content, supporting operators with digital instructions, tracking skills, standardizing processes at scale.

When should you choose it? If you have a large production environment, want to professionalize your digital workplace, and already have strong content you want to scale. Not if your primary challenge is the risk of losing expert knowledge.

Poka, EZ GO, and ManualMaster share one common starting point: you provide the knowledge, and they make it accessible. They are built for knowledge that has already been documented. ELICIT is not.

ELICIT: when knowledge itself is the problem

ELICIT extracts experiential knowledge that has never been documented from the minds of your experts and makes it usable for everyone on the shop floor.

This is done through a structured interview process with your most experienced employees. An ELICIT knowledge analyst asks the questions experts never ask themselves: not “what do you do?”, but “how do you decide? Which signals do you observe? When do you deviate from the standard? What do you do when things don’t go as expected?” In 3 to 5 interviews, the analyst captures this decision logic in a knowledge system.

This knowledge system is not just documentation. It is an interactive model that makes the thinking of your best expert available to the entire organization. In practice, this means helping every employee think and act like your most experienced expert.

When should you choose this? If you are facing one or more of the following situations:

An experienced expert is about to leave and his knowledge is not documented anywhere
New employees need months to operate independently in a complex environment
Quality or output varies significantly between shifts or operators
You want to reduce dependency on specific individuals

ELICIT is unique in this comparison. Not only because it is the only solution that extracts knowledge, but also because it is the only one that works alongside other knowledge management tools. Poka coordinates who does what. ManualMaster manages your formal documentation. EZ GO brings procedures to the shop floor. ELICIT captures why your expert makes certain decisions. That is the layer other systems cannot capture.

ELICIT extracts experiential knowledge that has never been documented from the minds of your experts and makes it usable for everyone on the shop floor.

Which tool fits your problem?

When choosing a solution, you should first determine which type of knowledge you want to capture.

Is it explicit knowledge, procedures that already exist but need to be better organized or made more accessible? Then ManualMaster, EZ GO, or Poka are strong options, depending on your specific situation.

Is it experiential knowledge, the decision logic that exists nowhere yet and disappears when your expert leaves? Then ELICIT offers exactly what you need. For example, see how CONO Kaasmakers and Burg Azijn used ELICIT to make their experiential knowledge available on the shop floor.

Get to know ELICIT

And do you want to know how ELICIT can work for you? Request a demo and discover it for yourself!

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