The retrieval of technical information

An American study has estimated that in the USA 16000000 engineer man-hours are spent each year in searching for technical information instead of in designing. Once the central nature of this problem has been analysed and reduced to its component parts, any good system designer can produce a `perfect solution'. Unfortunately, the cost of this system would probably be prohibitive, depending on whether you rate human beings' real value to be their decision-making ability or whether you think you can afford to waste their time in manual and repetitive operations.