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, sectorled 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 increased revenues 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.

 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 the product 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 backto-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 the potential 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, an R&D department within a mobile operator is more of an enabler a 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 scenario thinking 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 to define existing knowledge and executing research to acquire new knowledge. Finally, by deliver I mean the way we distribute the knowledge we have gained throughout the organisation. 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.

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