Developing knowledge workers on the factory floor: The case of ABB‐Alamo

The term “knowledge worker”, coined by management guru Peter Drucker, generally describes an employee whose job activities are associated with the refining, manipulating and trading of information. Contrast this with the description of the typical industrial worker, whose activities are centered on the production and development of tangible objects and commodities. In today’s fluid, rapidly evolving global marketplace, labor‐intensive low‐skilled manufacturing jobs will continue to migrate to countries where a lower wage can be paid, while manufacturing enterprises in developed nations will remain under pressure to increase both productivity gains and product quality.