Knowledge Management Case Study
About Simplified Methods
Client: Manufacturing Company (Mexico)
One of the largest independent manufacturer of crankshafts in the world. The company manufactures over 2 million crankshafts per year, serving customers located in North America, South America, Europe and Asia. So far, the company has established a good reputation of producing excellent quality and highly durable crankshafts at competitive prices in a consistent manner. However, in order to continue to meet client demands, expectations and gain competitive advantage our client required the capability to add value to its business through knowledge and innovation.
Objectives
Our client realized a loss of knowledge assets through its business processes that limits the capturing, re-use, and dissemination of information needed to meet the organization’s strategic priorities. The ultimate goal of this initiative was to enable collaboration and knowledge sharing among business units, regardless of geographic or operational boundaries, and accelerate the pace of organization learning and development.
Challenges
• Lack of leadership support for knowledge management initiatives because they do not have a clear understanding of the benefits and how it can be used to sustain a competitive advantage.
• The siloed organizational structure inhibits knowledge sharing. There is a lack of collaboration between business units in terms of sharing processes, data and information.
• The company depended on certain engineers and technicians who were the only employees capable of setting up or making changes in the machinery.
• No system or structure in place to transfer, retain and manage the intellectual capital derived from experienced staffs.
• No incentive structure in place to promote knowledge management initiatives. As a result most employees were not motivated to attend training and development programs.
• Lack of governance around knowledge sharing and the use of the knowledge management tools like SharePoint
Results
Simplified Methods satisfied these requirements by:
• Conducting research to review and analyze the current knowledge management maturity level of the organization
• Designed a knowledge management framework around end-to-end crankshaft design process that aims to capture knowledge and align it to production process to support continuous improvement & innovation
• Recommended an effective way to capture, store and leverage existing knowledge in order to provide consistency, increase efficiency and transparency
• Defined meaningful metrics to help assess the effectiveness of the knowledge management programs within the organization
• Provided strategic recommendations on how they should leverage their existing SharePoint intranet for communication, collaboration and knowledge sharing. In order to connect people, ideas and information.
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