Why rebuilding a capability takes more than new factories

What takes longer to rebuild: industrial capacity or training and institutional knowledge?

Both take a long time, but factories can be rebuilt before the workforce and institutions regain the knowledge to use them fully.

Industrial plant and institutional knowledge are both slow to recover. Factories can be rebuilt visibly while the harder restoration of effective capability remains incomplete. New equipment and crews can exist on paper before organisations know how to employ them well. This distinction links the discussion of German gun production with the following explanation of how heavy naval guns were manufactured.