My dad used to work for a big tech OEM and retired a few years back. He had years of supply chain flows, contacts, locations, and more for his old company in notes, his head, and Visio and was hired through layoffs for that knowledge. I think in like 2006 he was picked up by a manager who had heard him speak up in a meeting years before to explain a step in a chain and knew he knew what the company was able to do.

He could jump into the flow of parts and information for a specific printer model from 10 years ago. He knew the reasons for each steps like import tax avoidance, cost/benefit analysis of using one vendor/shipper/etc, or even that they used to have a specific engineer at that one factory who was amazing at QA and tolerance checking or something like that. When teams were behind due to supply chain issues, he would jump in to analyze their process. Sometimes that meant combining it with ongoing flows like "This factory here makes a part like that for product X, I'll get you a sample so you can adapt it into your product to rework."

He had immense company value and history committed to memory that he tried to pass before leaving as teams moved to India or China. But I doubt anyone at a decision making level was aware.