Knowledge Management

Knowledge Communities: To encourage knowledge sharing behavior in an informal manner, across the boundaries of departments and divisions, various Communities of Practice or Knowledge Communities are formed. Each knowledge community further consists of certain subcommunities The knowledge communities continuously look for new bench marks, identify gaps, set targets and strive to achieve them through experiments and best practice deployment. In the process, the new knowledge gathered is collected in the form of various K-Products, such as, Best Practice Identification, Trial of new products, Experiments and Best Practice deployment. communities organize inter and intra community meetings and seminars at regular intervals chaired by senior officials to discuss and share knowledge on aspects that affects both the parties.

Content Management : The knowledge repository of Tata Steel is not only huge in size, but also is rich in content - thanks to the contribution of more than 15,000 employees. Old knowledge pieces are archived and knowledge on similar subjects are distilled. In the process of knowledge distillation, members are encouraged to compile knowledge pieces available in related areas and hence prepare a consolidated one which will contain all relevant information at one place. Involving shop-floor employees in KM: A large number of employees in Tata Steel are deployed at the shop-floor with a wealth of knowledge In order to capture the tacit knowledge from shop floor and to facilitate horizontal deployment of the same at all other locations, a new initiative named as Knowledge Manthan (means churning) has been started in 2004. Realizing the rich dividend from its Knowledge Manthan initiative the Knowledge management group has extended the idea of involving grass-root employees by launching yet another initiative named MASS in the year 2005. Many of the ideas captured through Manthan are now being deployed through MASS.

KM Portal @ Tata Steel

On the corporate intranet a KM Portal has been developed to communicate all KM related matters across the company. It provides an online knowledge repository to the users who can submit, search and use knowledge pieces available on it. The portal also provides a virtual forum where employees can invite and involve other fellow employees or lead experts (specific to interested areas) to discuss and solve the problems faced by them. Relevant Indian and international standards, quality system manuals, standard practices and procedures also feature for ready reference of users.