vanita km project

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DEVELOPING WORLD OF

KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMANT

By: DARSHANA V GALA

M.COM -II BATCH 2012-13

Knowledge management (KM) involves using the ideas, knowledge and experience of

employees, customers and suppliers to improve an organizations performance

Knowledge management consulting services and technologies are in high demand, and

knowledge management software is rapidly evolving.

Without KM, people in organizations tend to remain fixed in silos, poorly knitted together, with

little sharing of good practice and prone to duplicating work. This proves time-consuming,

costly, and can lead to disappointing results. As local government strives for sustainable, sector-

led improvement, KM is becoming increasingly critical.

KM provides a set of practical approaches and tools to ensure that we learn from whats gone

before and share these learnings.This can help us to build the sectors knowledge.

Knowledge Management (KM) refers to a multi-disciplined approach to achieving organizational

objectives by making the best use of knowledge. KM focuses on processes such as acquiring,

creating and sharing knowledge and the cultural and technical foundations that support them.

A creative approach to KM can result in improved efficiency, higher productivity and increasedrevenues in practically any business function.

Section 1 of my paper includes types & benefits of knowledge management

Section 2 shows the implementation of knowledge through 3 case studies

Section 3 deals with road map ahead.

Section 1:

TYPES OF KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT

Tacit knowledge :

Tacit knowledge is personal, context-specific knowledge that is difficult to formalize, record,

articulate; it is stored in the heads of people. Tacit knowledge consists of various components,

such as such intuition, experience, ground truth, judgment, values, assumptions, beliefs, and

intelligence. The tacit component of is mainly developed through a process of trial and error

encountered in practice.


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Explicit knowledge:

Explicit knowledge is that component of knowledge that can be codified and transmitted in a

systematic and formal language: documents, databases, webs, e-mails, charts, etc.

BENEFITS OF KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT

The benefits of effective KM include:

Saving considerable time, money and effort by learning from others' experience to find better

solutions more quickly.

Developing understanding of the challenges and solutions for local government improvement.

Developing skills support timely professional development.

Improving results use the best knowledge and information to provide a foundation for new

work.

Achieving breakthroughs working in collaboration to achieve innovation.

Strengthening relationships so that people across local government can learn from each other.

Section 2:

Case study 1: Knowledge Management Initiatives nestle

As the product development process starts in the organization, previous tacit and

explicit knowledge should be used. As well as, external knowledge shall be well

processed before the development of the product.

Research should be carried out about the customer demands, also the region where theproduct is to be launched; their cultural value should also be studied. It is necessary to

understand the target market before developing the product. The nutritional value of the

product should also be considered at the time of research, otherwise the product might

fail because of its low nutritional value and quality.

Allow for a large number of people to

contribute to and share stored data

Control access to data, based on user roles.

User roles define what information each user

can view or edit

Aid in easy storage and retrieval of data

Reduce repetitive duplicate input


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Improve the ease of report writing

Improve communication between users

Case study 2Cadbury Knowledge Management Practice

1. Quality Operating System (QOS): Launched in the 1990s, this ensures adherence to a

common standard set for procedures, guidelines, standards and metrics that are critical to

quality;

2. Quality Leadership Initiative (QLI): Established in 2002 to support the companys back-

to-basics strategy. The purpose of the QLI is to engage all employees to improve quality and

customer satisfaction jointly as a team;

3. Consumer Driven 6-Sigma: Launched in 1999 to improve quality faster. 6-Sigma is a

methodology that applies a set of statistical tools to reduce and eliminate defects, and also help

improve quality of products and services;

4. Supporting these three top-down systems is a bottom-up employee-based KM system,

including best-practice replication, which allows employees to capture and share proven quality

improvement practices.

What are the results of these efforts?

It is truly gratifying to note the results of replication on on-going quality improvements, as

reported by newspapers and trade publications:

Between 1998 and 2003, Ford has improved about 18 per cent in initial quality, Brian

Walters, director of Quality Research at JD Power Associates, in Fords Quality Battle,

Serious efforts appear to be paying off, Automotive Industries, June 2003

Ford Motor Company reduced warranty costs by about $1bn since 2001, as quoted by

the VP of quality, Detroit Free Press, 8 December 2004. Since 6-Sigmas inception (1999), Ford has saved about $1bn in waste elimination

globally. Year-over-year savings worldwide were $359m last year. 6 Sigma in Ford

Revisited, Quality Digest, June 2003

Of course, the companys BPR system cannot take credit for all of the above results; however, it

certainly can take a credit for a significant portion of the improvements.


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Case study 3: VODAFONE

When I defined and built the R&D centre at Vodafone Netherlands, I immediately recognised thepotential knowledge management had as a concept. An R&D department within a mobile

operator like Vodafone cannot be compared to an R&D unit in, say, a university or a

manufacturing firm. Instead of being directly responsible for actual product developments, anR&D department within a mobile operator is more of an enablera driver of out-of-the-box

thinking. As such, the R&D department at Vodafone is tasked with building a bridge between the

traditional R&D functionality and strategic and operational activities within Vodafone. Our

challenge was therefore threefold: how to capture, undertake and deliver R&D.

By capture, I mean defining the work that R&D should do. This is partly achieved by scenariothinking and scenario planning, although we also undertake extensive data analysis projects to

define trends and form future visions. We also capture the concerns of business leaders within

the company as a whole. This all leads to the identification of the knowledge we require in order

to make the best decisions about how to move the company forward.

By undertake, I mean the projects and activities we do in order to acquire knowledge. This is

something we do together with other companies and universities, and by undertaking activities todefine existing knowledge and executing research to acquire new knowledge.

Finally, by deliver I mean the way we distribute the knowledge we have gained throughout theorganisation. As such, the value of knowledge-management concepts to our ongoing operations

was clear from the outset.

SECTION 3: ROAD MAP AHEAD

Knowledge management as a concept is very attractive and to many organizations is trendy and

nice to be associated with. For many IT vendors and management consultants, it is a business

opportunity that should not be missed. But while there is nothing wrong with making business

sense out of knowledge management, there is a need to go beyond the search and replace

practice of the word information to the word knowledge.

However, implementing knowledge management is also not that easy. Companies worldwide in

both the private and public sector have shown keen interest in knowledge management, judging

from the amount of money expected to be committed for knowledge management in the next few

years.


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BIBLIOGRAPHY

The Knowledge management Toolkit-Amrit Tiwana

http://www.ischool.utexas.edu/~blewis/i385q/references.htm

http://www.icmrindia.org/casestudies/Management.asp?area=Knowledge%20Management
http://www.ischool.utexas.edu/~blewis/i385q/references.htmhttp://www.icmrindia.org/casestudies/Management.asp?area=Knowledge%20Managementhttp://www.icmrindia.org/casestudies/Management.asp?area=Knowledge%20Managementhttp://www.ischool.utexas.edu/~blewis/i385q/references.htm

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