Good Example Of Report On Knowledge Management Systems

Introduction

Organizations have realized the value of appropriately managing “what they know” and maximize the utility of this knowledge. In an economy that is constantly changing and the only certain thing is uncertainty, knowledge becomes s key competitive advantage. This writing explores knowledge management in Toyota motors and how this benefits from their appropriate knowledge management systems. The introduction will cover the definition of knowledge management and knowledge management systems followed by an introduction to Toyota motors. The writing will also evaluate the challenges that face Toyota motors with regard to their knowledge management systems after an analysis of the current KMS in Toyota. The writing will also explore the knowledge management system in Accenture and analyze the current system, the strengths, weaknesses and success of the knowledge management system.

Definition of terms

According to Davenport & Pursak (1998, pg 78) knowledge is a fluid mixture of experiences, values as well as contextual information along with expert insight, which provides a framework for evaluation and incorporation of new information and experiences. They infer that the knowledge origin and application is in the minds of the people. Alavi & Leidner (1999, pg 56) define knowledge as a personal belief that is justified and that serves to increase the individual’s capacity to take actions. Nonaka and Takeuchi (1995, pg114) further explain the two types of knowledge; tacit and explicit knowledge. Tacit knowledge comes from the internal individual processes and is stored in the minds of human beings, usually described ad reflection or experience. Explicit knowledge is knowledge that is stored in a technological or mechanical device such as a database or a document (Asiaei & Jusoh, R. (2015, pg 147). It is more useful if it is shared among many people. A knowledge management system is a system that is used to apply and use the knowledge management principles and uses data driven objectives around the business productivity, a competitive business model as well as business intelligence analysis.
Usually, knowledge management is thought of as a management tool. It is, however, comprised of two aspects; an operational tool or information handling tool as a strategically focused management tool. As an information handling tool, it includes the forming, organizing, and utilizing of knowledge (Bolisani & Scarso, 2015, pg 154). This means that it should be used for managing different and associated stages. The company needs first to acquire the information, enter it into storage and then structured in a rational manner. Knowledge management is all about attaining and re-posting the employees knowledge and availing it to others so that they can put it into use (Davenport, & Guest, 2001, pg 136). This way, the organization can be able to convert tactic knowledge to explicit knowledge which everyone can use in order to increase their efficiency, as well as their productivity (Chatterjee, 2014, pg 74). The third stage relates to maximum delivery and utilization of information and as such increases productivity and efficiency.

Article analysis

The article explores Toyotas strategy of creating knowledge and transfer to its staff and production lines all over the world. The literature review provided explains further on the transfer and creation of knowledge as well as the lessons that are learnt from the case of Toyota and analyzes the lessons that can be learnt from Toyota’s knowledge management tools. The literature review evaluates the transfer and the creation of marketing knowledge with a wide array of knowledge being provided. Kohlbacher (2007, pg 124) defines marketing knowledge as all the knowledge including declarative and procedural that concerns marketing thinking as well as the marketing behavior in a corporation. The literature provided further evaluates more firms in Japan and their capacity as knowledge creators. Takeuchi and Nonaka (2002, pg 78) join Hedlund and Nonaka (1993, pg 78) in the argument that western firms differ from Japanese firms in the regard that Japanese firms make use of tacit knowledge with western firms making use of explicit knowledge. The article reveals how Toyota has been able to benefit from the working together with PSA and the knowledge they have of the European market. It explains the benefits to Toyota and their knowledge management system, that have arisen from synergies of working together with in the fostering of mutual knowledge sharing as well as the creation of the same between the two independent car makers. The merits from this strategic alliance are explained. The use of the TPS (Toyota Production System) system has been extremely beneficial to Toyota in knowledge management,

Approaches used by Toyota

Some of the approaches used by Toyota include
Learn-local, act global
The approaches of learn-local, act-global, which have proved useful for the development of international business along with the knowledge based approach they have chosen in their marketing, have proved beneficial to Toyota. They have allowed the company to benefit from tapping the rich local knowledge bases and this has earned them a competitive advantage along with a leadership position in the global automotive industry. Toyota’s production has changed from the centralized multinational network of production to a global optimum network and this has allowed the other stations to have a significant gain in participation and responsibility. This has responded significantly to the process of knowledge creation in production.
Toyota’s production facilities are all over the world on every continent, and they continue to increase in number and capabilities. This is in line with their policy of global balance and the local adaptation, a situation that is also reflected in their sales. This show Toyota’s knowledge management systems in the automotive development field and how they have changed their strategy from creating knowledge on Japan and the transferring the knowledge to other subsidiaries and around the globe and changed to focusing on creating knowledge in the foreign markets by the local staff in conjunction with local partners.
Creation of knowledge is not just the compilation of facts, and rather it is a unique human process that cannot be easily reduced or replicated. This is perhaps why effective knowledge management, involving actions of knowledge creating, sharing, protecting and discarding, depends on a healthy enabling context (Ichijo, 2006a, pg 41), a fact that Toyota pride in. Toyota generates an enabling context for its knowledge management and creation by using five enablers. Installing a knowledge vision as Ichijo (2006a, pg 87), emphasizes the need for moving the mechanics of a business strategy to the importance of the creation of an overall vision of proper knowledge management in any given organization. Toyota has achieved this by implementing a learn-local act-global strategy that serves as a knowledge vision. Toyota has become a true learning organization which continues to evolve and learn from the past century (Liker, 2004, 13, xv) and this has translated to it becoming one of the genuine learning enterprises in history. (Dyer and Nobeoka, 2000, 346) agreed that Toyota is recognized widely as a leader in the continuity of improvement and learning.
The second enabler who is managing conversations is a facilitator of communication among members, and this is a critical task since conversations create an arena for knowledge management (Ichijo 2006, pg96). According to Osorno (2004, pg281), Toyota is a master of the dialogue and conversations, and as such, it has a strong culture of nurturing an attitude of listening as well as building of the listening capabilities showing Toyota’s ability to master the second enabler. The third enabler to a proper knowledge management environment is the mobilizing of knowledge activists. These are the knowledge proselytizers in a company, who spread knowledge in the organization serving the purpose of cross-leveling knowledge since they are the ones responsible for energizing the process of knowledge creation and management in a company (Ichijo, 2006a, pg 234). In Toyota, these are referred to as coordinators, where the Japanese employees working from the headquarters sent to the overseas operation stations teach their counterparts of Toyota’s way of handling business face to face (Liker, 2004, pg 132).
The fourth enabler is creating the right context and it examines a close connection with the organizational structure, strategies and knowledge enabling and it involves appropriate organizational structures, which foster effective collaboration and solid relationships within the organizations (Ichijo, 204, 142-143). Toyota’s way of creation of the right context has become particularly obvious in looking at the interactions between it and its suppliers (Dyer and Hatch, 2004, pg 123). Dyer and Hatch (2004, pg 58) found that Toyota has developed a strong infrastructure that allows for a variety of inter-organizational processes facilitating a transfer of tacit and explicit within the entirety of the supplier network. Evans and Wolf (2005, 100-101) postulate that the Toyota philosophy of a continuous improvement comprises of many smaller collaborations and this collaboration is reliant on two infrastructure components, a shared knowledge pool, along with universally available tools for knowledge movement.
The fifth enabler is the globalization of local knowledge which considers the complicated issue of disseminating of knowledge (von Krogh et al., 2000). It is critical that a company seeking a competitive advantage in its global operations should create knowledge in a given local unit and disseminate it to the other local units efficiently, fast and effectively (Ichijo, 2006a, pg 187). Sharing of knowledge in a global capacity constitutes a competitive advantage of a company (Donate & de Pablo, 2015, pg 98). Toyota achieves this by having feedback knowledge and the best practices to the headquarters and further circulating these to the other global units by making use of their global production centers.
ii. Tacit knowledge approach
The fact is that in any company, the important knowledge is in the workplace, on the floors of the factory, and within the sales and service organization dealing directly with the consumers, basically the frontlines of the company (Yasumuro and Westney, 2001, pg 178). This underscores the value of tacit knowledge in knowledge creation and management (Ichijo, 2006b, pg 112). At the end of every week, groups of Toyota workers spend hours on an analysis of the performance problems identified in productivity and quality. Each of these proposes a set of countermeasures that are to be used to correct the problems and discussion of the results as well. Through these personal interactions in these high-quality circle settings, to employees share their idea that should be put up for improvement as well as devising new ideas for assets and improvement of the results of their tests.
iii. Explicit knowledge approach
This involves the documenting of the teams of workers, and each individual worker is allocated to perform on the assembly lines (Dutta, & Madalli, 2015, pg 56). The documents later provide a detailed description of the way to perform all these tasks, the time frame for each task, and the sequence of steps to be followed in its completion. Toyota also has a system where new employees work alongside the experienced employees and transfer the knowledge to them.
The reasons that led to the adoption of their knowledge management system include can be divided into selected trends (Earl, 2001, pg 147). First of all the Japanese automotive industry is very mature and this made Toyota want to look for more opportunities abroad more intensively (Pan, Wang, Zhang, Ling, & Lin, 2015, pg 94). After finding North America and Europe, it felt the competition increase and they needed to establish a market in Eastern Europe.
Second, Toyota realized that the major global players were continually penetrating into the emerging markets and this caused competition to intensify quickly and severely. Because of the price-sensitive nature of the consumers in these new markets, there was a need to have a new strategy to deal with the diversity if taste and buying behavior exhibited (Liongosari, & Dempski, 2005, pg 80).
Finally, Toyota established a new strategy because it needed a continuing way to leverage the local and global knowledge and achieve cross-boundary collaboration with its local and global partners.

Knowledge management systems at UniCredit

This is a global financial service and management consulting company. It is devoted to the clients’ needs, innovation and constantly introducing valuable services to the market. UniCredit through its knowledge management team which is part of the human resources department in the organization realized that the more efficiently the employees can tap into the expertise, the more effectively UniCredit will be able to respond to the needs of the consumers. This is because for companies in the financial service industry knowledge is critical. The organization transitioned the numerous knowledge repositories into a centralized system which would serve:

They realize the importance of lateral knowledge flow

Facilitate a cross border knowledge flow
Streamline the content management to a consistent user interface.
The K.M also sought to allow employees to find the information they sought in a much easier way and spent more time serving the clients. This time-saving would also serve to enable the knowledge management team to maximize the time spent in the development of assets. Assets managed by the organization include land titles, client credentials, best practices and project estimates.
Unicredit’s knowledge management system is inclusive of some of the most frequent elements, using both hard (ICT) and soft (human relations) building blocks that have been found. The bank realized that they need to facilitate knowledge flows across geographical boundaries; they needed to streamline the communication through creation of an intranet infrastructure. Tis allowed their employees of Unicredit to have a single center of work at the desktop (Venzin, 1998, pg 10). A strategy session was held by the organization in 2006 aimed at determining the goal of KM. They emerged with a knowledge management strategy postulating that they should drive value from the knowledge so as to enhance their revenue, reduce costs and foster innovation. Their knowledge management vision is to create a world-class knowledge management culture and environment contributing to UniCredit’s success (Paik, & Choi 2005, pg 242).
After scrutinizing the knowledge management system, the organization revealed the following strengths. The company is strong and has a strong global presence, and this adds to the effectiveness of the knowledge management system because it has a strong and reliable database. It has strong existing enablers to a strong knowledge management system including knowledge exchange, my learning, and the UniCredit methodology. Among the company staff, there is an inherent belief in the value of a strong management system. The organization’s knowledge management has support from all the staff including the CEO, the upper level, and the mid-level management. Another strength is the historical success that knowledge management has had at UniCredit.

Challenges experienced in implementing the knowledge management system

Some of the challenges experienced include having some unorganized tools and technologies in the infrastructure facilitating the knowledge management system. It is also difficult to access and share information at UniCredit. There arises a challenge when the organization fails to capture knowledge as an employee leaves the organization. Other challenges arise because of the tough economic environment. It is important to have cost effective tools in the organizations because of the challenges in finance management in the organization. It is keen to invest in products that are assured to reflect in a gain in revenue. It is critical that a return on investment is demonstrated before the implementing of a knowledge management system, and this translates to a challenge because knowledge management is into an income generating asset, rather, it is a non-tangible asset presenting benefits to the organization.

Controlling these challenges

In order to control these challenges, it is important to have some remedies including increasing the level of employee retention, as well as job satisfaction. The management systems also serve as a great tool for employees to gain information and as such, leads to decreased knowledge drain. It turns the knowledge into intellectual capital that is beneficial to the organization leading to new business opportunities.
The organization implemented a highly sophisticated knowledge management system technology and this has been beneficial to the organization that ensures that each business unit has its own database. This has been successful through high utilization of ICT and KM software’s. With this system, every business unit is responsible for the management and updating of their content. The organization then introduced a web-based access to the technology and this increased the efficiency.
However, this technology faces some challenges. These include the lack of usability meaning that it is less user-friendly. This means that some employees have to be constantly refreshed on how to use the system or else they do not stand to benefit as much from the technology. Some employees also lack the awareness of the content and capabilities of the system (Rosemann, & vom Brocke, 2015, pg 131). This may cause them to be shut out of some information available on the system. The system also has an inefficient search process, because every department is in charge of its own content, and this has led to the lack of synchronization translating to duplication of documents. The system also has the challenge of a lack of consistency in the templates on the document. It also lacks a clear governance structure. It is not clear who has responsibility for the documents. The system was also very manual since there was a lacking in the procedure of managing the system. As such, the cost of maintaining it also increased.
UniCredit then sought to develop a new architecture that had a single point of entry, one that centralized the development and operation of Unicredit and simplified knowledge management. There was a system re-architecture of the system using MS Avanade (MS Gold partner) products and the processes created a proper team to handle the projects. It also provided easy access to the knowledge management system from the company portal. This solved effectively all the challenges that the organization faced with the previous knowledge management system.

Social media and knowledge management systems

Social media platforms are now becoming household names and the introduction of social media in knowledge management systems should serve to enhance the knowledge creation, as well as the sharing of potential. The growing trend towards the use of social media as long as other digital competencies among the employees offers a unique opportunity for many of the knowledge-intensive firms (Valmohammadi, & Ahmadi, 2015, pg 43). Individuals who possess the digital knowledge and those with access to adequate internet facilities engage actively in socializing over the internet. The use of social media is out to change completely the rules of knowledge management systems.
In the traditional system, knowledge is created at a given point in time, and it is stored at this moment as well, documented and this document goes through an approval process after which it is ultimately published. Social media takes the knowledge and makes this circumstance highly iterative (Vance, Andersen, & Vaiman, 2014, pg 38). The content creation is as a social object that no longer exists as a point in time and rather, it exists as a social interaction that disassembles the pillars on which it exists as it evolves. As an example, a content in micro-blogging services shifts meaning as the discussion unfolds. There is a shift in adoption of the enterprises of social computing and this circumstance is greatly influenced by the consumerization and these points to the emergent observation that the future of knowledge today focuses on managing the unstructured content. It is a likely fact that the social media driven knowledge management may require less of a management component. It is important to have a smart analysis that can result in the new insight, and it will have value for the organization.

Conclusion

There remain many technological opportunities to improve the interaction and the increase of collaboration in the organization which are continually expanding. The benefits of a well-designed knowledge management system are plenty. These include time saving, and transfer of knowledge from the more experienced employees to the new employees. In order to be beneficial to any organization, it is important to manage knowledge as intellectual capital.

Reference List

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