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Design & the Implementation of knowledge management system(Case study: Saveh rolling & profile Mills company)

Design & the Implementation of knowledge management system(Case study: Saveh rolling & profile Mills company)

Knowledge management is the practice of harnessing and exploiting intellectual capital in order to gain competitive advantage and customer commitment through efficiency, innovation and effective decision-making. Both the ideas of knowledge worker (Drucker, 1993) and expert labor think that knowledge management is important to any entity.

The knowledge management system is the framework of an integration of organizational elements in organizational culture, organizational information technology infrastructure and the organization’s store of individual and collective experiences, learning, insights, values, etc. Members can effectively accomplish organizational goals through knowledge management processes and procedures .A firm that effectively manages knowledge is likely to be considered a learning organization (Mellander, 2001). Knowledge dissemination and responsiveness to knowledge are cited repeatedly as the most effective way to a competitive advantage While the need for effective managing of knowledge is accepted, much of the literature continues to explore measurement and its effect on outcomes. [1]

                               

KMS CONCEPTUAL MODEL IN INDUSTRIES:

There are two types of knowledge involved in industries settings: academic knowledge and organizational knowledge. Academic knowledge is the primary purpose of universities and colleges. Organizational knowledge refers to knowledge of the overall business of an institution: its strength and weaknesses, the markets it serves, and the factors critical to organizational success. This paper suggests strategies for the formation of KM ecology in an academic knowledge framework and organizational knowledge framework. Each dimension is depicted further in the following sections. It is believed that knowledge management can be used to support COMPANY, which in turn supports teaching and learning [1]

Huang (1998) suggested four major processes to form a culture of knowledge sharing and collaboration. They are: (1) making knowledge visible, (2) increasing knowledge intensity, (3) building knowledge infrastructure, and (4) developing a knowledge culture. From an academic knowledge perspective, the learning community should start at the individual level, create departmental knowledge, create domains of knowledge across departments that share academic interests or disciplines, create institutional knowledge networks and networks with other institutions and corporations [2]. This research presents three strategies to establish knowledge ecologies within the academic framework: individual strategy, institutional strategy and network strategy.

The most generally recognized four organizational knowledge management strategies are (The American Productivity and Quality Center and Arthur Andersen Consulting, 1997). As suggested by Coukos-Semmel (2003), examples of culture strategies in industry include staff development and training, communities of practice, and promotion of learning organizations. KM leadership strategies in industries include KM strategic planning in alignment with mission/vision, hiring knowledgeable employees, and evaluating employees for knowledgeable contribution. is responsible for providing infrastructure of tools, systems (intranets, web pages, electronic repositories, and data base, etc.), platforms, and automated solutions that centralized the development, application, and distribution of organizational knowledge. Measurement strategies may include benchmarking against other industries, allocating resources toward efforts that measurably increase the knowledge base, and linking and accessing impact of KM to the strategic plan.

Many KM application experts recommend the multi-perspective modeling approach. Models have been used previously from business management, such as SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats) analysis, balanced scorecards[6]  and benchmarking as good sources of techniques.

[3]

Snap in planning and imperative selection of experts’ knowledge.
Sheer care on expository aspect of design and sacrificing accuracy for speed.
Lack of primary study and evaluating knowledge requirements.
Unjustifiable submission of extraction phases to outside organizational advisors and shrinking their duties.
Lack of proficiency and familiarity of advisors in Safa Industrial Group.
Lack of employer and advisor’s care to necessity of make culture and planning in order to making physical and spiritual incentives for experts.  
Sheer confess on non-workable and expository soft ware to demonstrate the extracted knowledge.
Designating a little and abusive time in order to extracting skillful and experienced experts.
Lack of stress on educating particular courses of knowledge management to experts and designating a proper time for their readiness before interviews.
Releasing the extractions after interviews and lack of proper evaluating for completing, editing and filtering the experts. 
Lack of predicting of strategies in order to accretion of practical knowledge and creating collective knowledge. 
Lack of planning for participating before, during and after the interviews with experts.

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The shortage of human relations in organizations which causes increase of knowledge
Lack of proper relations between knowledge management and organizational guidelines
Non-clearance of knowledge and knowledge management value and inaccurate assessment of knowledge assistant which can be given to the organization.
Lack of complete value in knowledge management practices
Oral skills problems in organization

Time destruction, necessity of heavy work and high expenses 
Imposing extra work from knowledge management
Limitation in knowledge based systems  technology
Problems of data extraction from the text
Over increase of information
Difficulty in coding the incident knowledge
Necessity of powerful culture for creating observation justification
Possibility of sending incorrect message from knowledge staff and information manager

Personal effort to perceive knowledge with expecting reward
Scare of criticism and be charged from management and other chairman
 Lack of respect to the other fields
I case of lack of respect, joint aims and reliance 
Extra works which imposed to other parts staff

Distaste to joint information
Knowledge is power source, advantage, reward and penalty
Challenge among professionals
Altitude and value feeling from skill

Assure employees to declaring creative thoughts without fear of interested critics
Encourage the employees to have critical viewpoints to accepted procedures and ideas about organization products and strategies
Making epistemology knowledge
Promotion of meritocracy
Designating part of a time to some people in order to do their favorite activities
Encourage to relaxation and recreation in desirable workplace[5]

Saveh Rolling and Profile Mills Companyfirst started its operation in 1354 (1975) to produce various types of pipes and steel profiles with the production capacity of 50000 tons a year .In order to fulfill market development strategy and increasing the variety of products and entering exporting markets the management of this company has started its precise investment planning to promote the quality and the quantity of products. Currently we are producing tons of different kinds of steel products in various sizes which has been regarded the outcome of this effort and precise management planning.

recognized the need for organizational change to reposition strategically in the competitive industry.

Organization culture can inhibit or enhance organizational change efforts in knowledge management initiatives. Proper procedures are taken to ensure the concept of KM is correctly understood and thus creates a culture of sharing using organization-wide vocabulary. An outside KM specialty team is brought in as mediator for KM implementation. To ensure successful implementation of KMS, the Institute selects 50 representatives from faculty and staff of various departments to attend 14 brainstorming sessions. [4]

The design of an implementation process should focus on the user-how KM can improve a worker’s daily work. At the strategic level the organization analyzes and plans its business in terms of the knowledge it currently has and the knowledge it needs for future business processes. Road Map serves as a living document regularly updated and a framework for the monitoring of the knowledge management program. This document reflects the current state of the interrelationship between work in progress and proposed for the future and the overall milestones and aims of the program

 

[6]

Knowledge Base & Transfer 

KM Infrastructure & Maintenance 

Measurement &Evaluation

Coordination of KM Activities & Function

Review of KMS 

Determine Type of Knowledge

 Define KM Strategies 

DefineKM Road Maps

Leadership – Management

Organizational KM Strategies

Academic KM Strategies

KM Process &Implementation

 FI

  Core Team is formed as center for KMS for each community, including Router for initial evaluation of knowledge proposal, Reviewer for verification, Structures for categorizing, Editor for formalizing, Category Owner for maintenance and Communicator for knowledge transfer and sharing. For each community, specific KM activities are designed for acquiring and sharing knowledge. Major categories in each community are clearly defined.

The success of KM implementation should be linked to economic performance or industry value. The performance of a ties to rating, recruiting and financial stability.

 

Know-how and

Experience

Professional

knowledge of

consultant

Experience

Knowledge of

consulting field

Control of service

Quality

Quality of consulting

Service

Knowledge

Time for research and

investigation

Good public relation

Company reputation

Capability

Ability of listening,

surveying, and

analyzing

Innovation capability

Mastering of public

Relation

Sense of humor

Feeling

     The structure of knowledge management system and its implementation benefits proposed in this paper are surely helpful for OUR COMPANY. Some points are reminded in the following:

1. The forming and establishing of any knowledge management project is much dependent on top management support.

2-to form a learning type organization is highly dependent on sharing for each member to exchange his/her knowledge or experience with others.as a consequence the knowledge management implementation leads to increase competitiveness.

3-the organization status physiological conditions must be considered for implementing knowledge management.other management technologies like ERP and SCM are more concentrated in matching  up with the flow within the organization with less considering the physiological factor

[1] Coukos-Semmel, E. (2003). Knowledge management in research university: The processes and strategies.

[2] Paper presented at the American Educational Research Association 2003 Annual Meeting, Chicago, Illinois 

[3] Dee, J. R., Henkin, A. B., & Chen, J. H. (2000). Faculty autonomy: Perspectives from Taiwan. Higher education

40,200 

[4]Drucker, P. F. (1993). Post-Capitalist Society. New York: Harper Business. 

[5]Galbreath, J. (2000). Knowledge management technology in education: An overview. Educational technology 28-33

[6]Kaplan, R. S. & Norton, D. P. (1996). Using the balanced Scorecard as a strategic management system.

 

 

 

Source: ArticlesBase.com

Knowledge Mapping

Knowledge Mapping

 

Key Questions

 

What is K-map?
What does the K-map show, and what do we map?
Why is K-mapping so important?
What are some of the key principles, methodologies, and questions for K-mapping?
How do we create K-map?

 

Background

Each of the past centuries has been dominated by single technology. The eighteenth century was the time of the great mechanical systems accompanying the Industrial Revolution. The nineteenth century was the age of steam engine. After these, the key technology has been information gathering, processing and distribution. Among other developments, the installation of world wide telephone networks, the invention of radio and television, the birth and unprecedented growth of the computer industry and the launching of communication satellites are significant. Now people started to think that only information is not enough, what matters is Knowledge. So there has been seen shift from Information to Knowledge.

A bit of information without context and interpretation is data such as numbers, symbols.

Information is a set of data with context and interpretation. Information is the basis for knowledge.

Knowledge is a set of data and information, to which is added expert opinion and experience, to result in a valuable asset which can be used or applied to aid decision making. Knowledge may be explicit and/or tacit, individual and/or collective.

The term -Knowledge Mapping- seems to be relatively new, but it is not. We have been practising this in our everyday life, just what we are not doing is – we are not documenting it, and we are not doing it in a systematic way. Knowledge Mapping is all about keeping a record of information and knowledge you need such as where you can get it from, who holds it, whose expertise is it, and so on. Say, you need to find something at your home or in your room, you can find it in no time because you have almost all the information/knowledge about -what is where- and -who knows what- at your home. It is a sort of map set in your mind about your home. But, to set such a map about your organisation and organisational knowledge in your mind is almost impossible. This is where K-map becomes handy and shows details of every bit of knowledge that exists within the organisation including location, quality, and accessibility; and knowledge required to run the organisation smoothly – hence making you able to find out your required knowledge easily and efficiently.

Below are some of the definitions:

It’s an ongoing quest within an organization (including its supply and customer chain) to help discover the location, ownership, value and use of knowledge artifacts, to learn the roles and expertise of people, to identify constraints to the flow of knowledge, and to highlight opportunities to leverage existing knowledge.

Knowledge mapping is an important practice consisting of survey, audit, and synthesis. It aims to track the acquisition and loss of information and knowledge. It explores personal and group competencies and proficiencies. It illustrates or “maps” how knowledge flows throughout an organization. Knowledge mapping helps an organization to appreciate how the loss of staff influences intellectual capital, to assist with the selection of teams, and to match technology to knowledge needs and processes.

- Denham Grey

Knowledge mapping is about making knowledge that is available within an organisation transparent, and is about providing the insights into its quality.

- Willem-Olaf Huijsen, Samuel J. Driessen, Jan W. M. Jacobs

Knowledge mapping is a process by which organisations can identify and categorise knowledge assets within their organisation – people, processes, content, and technology. It allows an organisation to fully leverage the existing expertise resident in the organisation, as well as identify barriers and constraints to fulfilling strategic goals and objectives. It is constructing a roadmap to locate the information needed to make the best use of resourses, independent of source or form.

-W. Vestal, APQC, 2002

(American Productivity & Quality Center)

Knowledge Map describes what knowledge is used in a process, and how it flows around the process. It is the basis for determining knowledge commonality, or areas where similar knowledge is used across multiple process. Fundamentally, a process knowledge map cntains information about the organisation?s knowledge. It describes who has what knowledge (tacit), where the knowledge resides (infrastructure), and how the knowledge is transferred or disseminated (social).

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-IBM Global Services

How are the Knowledge Maps created?

Knowledge maps are created by transferring tacit and explicit knowledge into graphical formats that are easy to understand and interpret by the end users, who may be managers, experts, system developers, or anybody.

Basic steps in creating K-maps:

Basic steps – creating K-maps for specific task

 

The outcomes of the entire process, and their contributions to the key organisational activities
Logical sequences of all the activities needed to achieve the goal
Knowledge required for each activity {gives the knowledge gap}
Human resource required to undertake each activity {shows if recruitment is needed}

What do we map?

 

The followings are the objects we map:

 

Explicit knowledge subject
purpose
location
format
ownership
users
access right

 

Tacit knowledge

 

expertise
skill
experience
location
accessibility
contact address
relationships/networks

 

Tacit organisational process knowledge

 

the people with the internal processing knowledge

 

Explicit organisational process knowledge

 

codified organisational process knowledge

 

What do the knowledge maps show?

Knowledge map shows the sources, flows, constraints, and sinks of knowledge within an organisation. It is a navigational aid to both explicit information and tacit knowledge, showing the importance and the relationships between knowledge stores and the dynamics. The following list will be more illustrative in this regard:

 

Available knowledge resources
Knowledge clusters and communities
Who uses what knowledge resources
The paths of knowledge exchange
The knowledge lifecycle
What we know we don?t know (knowledge gap)

 

Activity: 1

>> Can you create your personal knowledge map which shows the types and location of knowledge resources you use, the channels you use to access knowledge?

Where does knowledge reside?

Knowledge can be found in

 

Correspondents, internal documents
Library
Archives (past project documents, proposals)
Meetings
Best practices
Experience
Corporate memory

 

Activity: 2

>> What are the other places where you can find knowledge?

What are the other things to be mapped?

Benefits of K-mapping

In many organisations there is a lack of transparency of organisation wide knowledge. Valuable knowledge is often not used because people do not know it exists, even if they know the knowledge exists, they may not know where. These issues lead to the knowledge mapping. Followings are some of the key reasons for doing the knowledge mapping:

 

to find key sources of knowledge creation
to encourage reuse and prevent reinvention
to find critical information quickly
to highlight islands of expertise
to provide an inventory and evaluation of intellectual and intangible assets
to improve decision making and problem solving by providing applicable information
to provide insights into corporate knowledge

 

The map also serves as the continuously evolving organisational memory, capturing and integrating the key knowledge of an organisation. It enables employees learning through intuitive navigation and interrogation of the information in the map, and through the creation of new knowledge through the discovery of new relationships. Simply speaking, K-map gives employees not only -know what-, but also -know how-.

Key principles of Knowledge Mapping

 

Because of their power, scope, and impact, the creation of organisational-level knowledge map requires senior management support as well as careful planning
Share your knowledge about identifying, finding, and tracking knowledge in all forms
Recognise and locate knowledge in a wide variety of forms: tacit, explicit, formal, informal, codified, personalised, internal, external, and permanent
Knowledge is found in processes, relationships, policies, people, documents, conversations, links and context, and even with partners
It should be up-to-date and accurate

 

K-mapping – key questions

Knowledge map provides an assessment of existing and required knowledge and information in the following categories:

 

What knowledge is needed for work?
Who needs what?
Who has it?
Where does it reside?
Is the knowledge tacit or explicit?
What issues does it address?
How to make sure that the K-mapping will be used in an organisation?

 

Note:

 

K-maps should be easily accessible to all in the organisation
It should be easy to understand, update and evolve
It should be updated regularly
It should be an ongoing process since knowledge landscapes are continuously shifting and evolving

 

Offline Readings:

 

K-mapping tools
K-mapping tool selection
Creating knowledge maps by exploiting dependent relationships
Creating knowledge structure map?
White pages
KM jargon and glossary

 

Online Resource: http://www..voght.com/cgi-bin/pywiki?KnowledgeMapping

K-mapping Tools:

 

MindMapping
Inspiration
IHMC (cmap.ihmc.us/) (need to have.NET Framework and JavaRunTime installed in your computer)

 

(Learn more about KM tool selection at http://www.voght.com/cgi-bin/pywiki?KmToolSelection )
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Categorised K-mapping

Social Network Mapping:

This shows networks of knowledge and patterns of interaction among members, groups, organisations, and other social entities who knows who, who goes to whom for help and advice, where the information enters and leaves the groups or organisation, which forums and communities of practice are operational and generating new knowledge.

Competency Mapping:

With this kind of mapping, one can create a competency profile with skill, positions, and even career path of an individual. And, this can also be converted into the?organisational yellow pages? which enables employees to find needed expertise in people within the organisation.

Process-based Knowledge Mapping:

This shows knowledge and sources of knowledge for internal as well as external organisational processes and procedures. This includes tacit knowledge (knowledge in people such as know-how, and experience) and explicit knowledge (codified knowledge such as that in document).

Conceptual Knowledge Mapping:

Also sometimes called -taxonomy-, it is a method of hierarchically organising and classifying content. This involves in labelling pieces of knowledge and relationships between them. A concept can be defined as any unit of thought, any idea that forms in our mind [Gertner, 1978]. Often, nouns are used to refer to concepts [Roche, 2002]. Relations form a special class of concepts [Sowa, 1984]: they describe connections between other concepts. One of the most important relations between concepts is the hierarchical relation (subsumption), in which one concept (superconcept) is more general than another concept (subconcept) like Natural Resource Management and Watershed Management. This mapping should be able to relate similar kind of projects and workshops conducting/conducted by two different departments, making them more integrated.

Knowledge is power, broadly accessible, understandable, and shared knowledge is even more powerful!

Deependra Tandukar: http://dt.coremag.net

Source: ArticlesBase.com