International Journal of Decision Making in Supply Chain and Logistics (IJDMSCL)

Volume 2, No. 1, January-June 2011, pp. 51-67,  International Science Press (India), ISSN:

PROCESS DESIGN FRAMEWORK FOR IMPLEMENTATION

OF KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT IN MANUFACTURING
ORGANIZATION

S. NAGARAJAN1, K. GANESH2, S. C. LENNY KOH3 AND R. RAJESH4

ABSTRACT
This paper proposes a process design framework for implementation of knowledge
management in a typical manufacturing industry of TamilNadu, India. The framework
is derived based on the brainstorming discussion with senior executives of around 46
manufacturing organization of TamilNadu, India. The idea is to simulate the thoughts
and devise a generic framework so as to act as base. This framework can be used as a
basis for predictive model and it paves the path for future research towards the validation
and verification of predictive model.
Keywords: Knowledge Management; Process Design Framework; Manufacturing
Organization.

1. INTRODUCTION
Most of the multi-national companies aim to embark an initiative to enhance the
capture, storage and dissemination of knowledge and information. The main objectives
behind this initiative is the identification and analysis of available and required
knowledge assets and knowledge asset related processes, and the subsequent planning
and control of related actions to develop both the assets and the processes so as to
fulfill organizational objectives.
In an organizational context, data represents facts or values of results, and relations
between data and other relations have the capacity to represent information. Patterns
of relations of data and information and other patterns have the capacity to represent
knowledge. For the representation to be of any utility it must be understood, and when
understood the representation is information or knowledge to the one that understands.

1
Assistant Professor, Vickram College of Engineering, Madurai, India. (Email: [email protected])
2
Senior Research Consultant, IBM India Private Limited, Mumbai, India. (Email: [email protected])
3
Professor, University of Sheffield, UK. (Email: [email protected])
4
Assistant Professor, Noorul Islam University, Nagercoil, India. (Email: [email protected])
 52 / S. NAGARAJAN, K. GANESH, S. C. LENNY KOH AND R. RAJESH

Unfortunately, there’s no universal definition of Knowledge Management (KM),

just as there’s no agreement as to what constitutes knowledge in the first place.
Succinctly put, KM is the process through which organizations generate value from
their intellectual and knowledge-based assets. Most often, generating value from such
assets involves sharing them among employees, departments and even with other
companies in an effort to devise best practices. It’s important to note that the definition
says nothing about technology, while KM is often facilitated by IT, though technology
by itself is not KM.
Knowledge assets are the knowledge regarding markets, products, technologies
and organizations, that a business owns or needs to own and which enable its business
processes to generate profits, add value, etc.
Knowledge management is not only about managing these knowledge assets but
managing the processes that act upon the assets. These processes include: developing
knowledge; preserving knowledge; using knowledge, and sharing knowledge.

2. LITERATURE REVIEW
Linninger et al. (1996) proposed the methodology of process assessor with its subsystems
material assessor and treatment selector, supports evaluation of the quality for all
process design. Ramesh and Tiwana (1999) mapped the problem associated with
knowledge management in the context of NPD by cross-functional collaborative teams
to broad Information Technology enabled solutions and subsequently translate these
into specific system characteristics. Also discussed the capture and manage tacit and
explicit process knowledge by a prototype system. Bertola and Teixeira (2003) represents
two strategies emphasize the opportunity of envisioning design as a multi functional
activity, capable of flexibly adapting to specific contextual factors and contributing to
the development of product and business innovation in any given situation. Explained
the design acts as a knowledge integrator in global corporations and as knowledge
broker in local companies. Yesilbas (2004) explains the purpose of the development of
product using knowledge sharing and interactions between varied activities and also
provide a collaborative design environment by defining a common repository for
knowledge management and focus on the conflict management process. Seshasai et al.
(2005) describes an approach that involves the acquisition of raw information from the
keystrokes entered by the user while performing the primary activity to produce
knowledge for future use and also describes an approach that involves the acquisition
of raw information. Ernst (2005) explains the potential of professional process design
and prescriptive design knowledge to produce sound design processes. Chen et al. (2008)
presents a distributed engineering knowledge management approach for the practice
of collaborative product design (CPD) and a CPD based engineering knowledge
management system is developed using unified modeling language (UML) modeling
 PROCESS DESIGN FRAMEWORK FOR IMPLEMENTATION OF KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT… / 53

techniques. Chen et al. (2008) develops a technology for functional requirement based
reference design retrieval as a decision support mechanism to retrieve relevant design
and associated knowledge for reference in conducting functional requirements of a
product. Brandt et al. (2008) advocate the idea of Process Data Warehousing as a
means to provide a knowledge management and integration platform for Engineering
design processes. They used the approach of flexible based schema with formally defined
semantics that enables the capture and reuse of design experience, supported by
advanced computer science methods. Nunes et al. (2009) discuss and specify mechanisms
that can be used to collect contextual information within an environment that support
the cycle of creating and dealing with information about activities and interactions,
focusing on their context. From the literature review, it is evident that there is less
attention towards the development of generic base process design framework for the
implementation of knowledge management solution in manufacturing organization.
This lacuna is the result of our path.

3. METHODOLOGY
The research methodology is explained in Figure 1.

Fig. 1: Research Methodology

 54 / S. NAGARAJAN, K. GANESH, S. C. LENNY KOH AND R. RAJESH

4. PROCESS DESIGN
This section will define the KM processes that a manufacturing organization needs to
initiate in order to achieve its KM goals and objectives. The processes thus described,
revolve around the following four broad areas which form the main pillars for any
knowledge management initiative:
1. Knowledge Capture
2. Knowledge Storage
3. Knowledge Retrieval

4.1 Knowledge Capture

One of the very first steps towards KM is to capture the knowledge that exists in the
organization. The different processes for knowledge capture that can be adopted in a
manufacturing organization are defined with respect to the following four areas:
1. Structured Knowledge
2. Document Workflow
3. Unstructured Knowledge

4.1.1 Structured Knowledge

This section defines the process to capture and store all the structured information
(Knowledge Items) in a manner such that these can be easily retrieved at any point in
time as shown in Fig.2
Any Knowledge Management tool provides the facility to upload content and catalog
it using attributes. These attributes are used when doing selective searches.
There are a number of ways in which content can be collected for storing into the
KM repository. The following procedure is suggested for capturing and storing
structured knowledge. These are:
• A user voluntarily submits a document to KM through an offline system such
as email for upload into KM. In this case KM Administrator would review the
document and upload it after assigning the required attributes, using the
content management tools’ content upload workflow.
The contribute section captures the categories, to which a Knowledge Item is
uploaded and also the attributes related to that category from the user who uploads
the document to the system.
• An end user can upload content directly into KM. Here (based on the licensing
issues) the user would upload the content into the content upload workflow of
the document management tool, and the content would get uploaded after it is
approved by the Expert / KM Administrator.
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• Some of the contents in the KM repository can be collected directly from other
applications. Such data can be made available (for search and access based on
security policies) in KM that are residing in internal application databases or
external links. In such cases the KM system should be able to talk to these
databases and retrieve information, on an “as and when” required basis.
• The Workflow process will facilitate KM Administrator in ensuring that the
knowledge items are available as and when they are due. The detailed
explanation of the document workflow process is mentioned in the “Document
Workflow” section.

Key Roles

• KM Administrator
• Expert
• User

Process Environment for Structured Knowledge

The process environment for structured knowledge is explained in Figure 2.

Fig. 2: Process Environment – Structure Knowledge

 56 / S. NAGARAJAN, K. GANESH, S. C. LENNY KOH AND R. RAJESH

4.1.2 Document Workflow

This workflow is required to push the knowledge items contributed by users through a
review and approval mechanism before they get published in KM site.
The knowledge items contributed to the KM through contribute section is routed
through a workflow process. The participants in the workflow are Expert and KM
Administrator.
Expert: The contributed documents to KM Site will appear in the Expert section
for approval. The Expert for each category is identified and the Expert should be able
to see the documents concerning his area. Expert should be able to do the following
actions.
• Approve
• Reject with Reason
• Change Profile Values
• Change Categories
Administrator: After the knowledge item successfully passes the expert approval
process, it will be waiting for KM Administrator to publish it for display in KM site as
shown in Fig.3. Administrator should be able to do the following actions.
• Publish
• Reject with Reason
• Change Profile Values
• Change Categories

Fig. 3: Process Environment – Administrator

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Key Roles

• KM Administrator
• Expert

Process Environment for Administrator

The process environment for administrator is explained in Figure 3.

4.1.3 Unstructured Knowledge

This section defines the process to capture and store the unstructured knowledge that
is being exchanged through unstructured means such as chats, discussion forums etc.
in a manner such that these can be easily retrieved at any point in time, and are also
made available for searches across the KM site.
Employee Chat: This is an online chat facility that is required. The chats can be
mainly: many to many chat or one to many chat (chat with an expert) or one to one
chat as in Fig.5.
In all cases, there should be an authentication of the person entering into the chat.
All chats should be moderated. Any User can request for a Chat along with the
information on the topic and time for the Chat. The KM Administrator schedules the
Chat with respect to the request from the user or on his own and invites users for the
chat. He is the owner of the Chat. The owner initiates the chats at the scheduled time
and intimates the invited users.
There should be a facility of creating a Knowledge Item out of a Chat transcript.
This knowledge item is stored in the KM repository with the appropriate properties
tagged to it and appropriate security settings. The KM administrator can also create
FAQ/Tips out of chat transcript. The expert should be able to select questions to edit
and submit to the new document, FAQ or Tips.
Discussion Forums: This is essentially a bulletin board service. The KM
administrator should be able to create forums under particular domains and sub-
domains. He can modify users list at any point of time. Under such forums Administrator
can create a new topic and also can approve/reject topic requests from users for
discussion. Any assigned users can then post their views on this topic. The thread will
continue with users’ replies against topics and also with replies to the replies. Only
KM Administrator will have the facility to delete topics, or the replies posted as explain
in Fig.5. View access will be available for all assigned users to the forums, whether
they have posted a question/comment/reply or not. There should be a provision for the
topic to expire at a given time. KM Administrator will then convert it (offline and
manually) into useful knowledge items, to be stored in the repository, if required, else
the entire transcript can be stored in archives.
 58 / S. NAGARAJAN, K. GANESH, S. C. LENNY KOH AND R. RAJESH

Online Collaboration: In this process, there will be a common ‘whiteboard’ on

which different users who have logged in can share views online as shown in Fig.6.
The whiteboard will allow users to draw (like a paint brush in MS Office) on this
common screen, and that image will be seen by all logged in users. This way a cumulative
effort can be used to develop a concept / strategy etc. The system will store the completed
discussion, and will be available with KM Administrator for further use.
E Mail Integration: The system is the same as that described in the earlier section
(Refer: 4.1.1 Structured Knowledge).
In addition, the system should provide a facility to be able to pick mails from the
central mail server as explained in Fig.7. All mails addressed to a designated mail box
for KM would be stored as a copy in the mail server. The KM system should be able to
scan through these mails in the specified mailbox and search for any key “knowledge
items” and bring out the search specific email contents.

Key Roles

• KM Administrator
• Expert
• User

Process Environment - Discussion Forums

The process environment for discussion forums is explained in Figure 4.

Fig. 4: Process Environment- Discussion Forums

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Process Environment - Employee Chat

The process environment for employee chat is explained in Figure 5.

Fig. 5: Process Environment - Employee Chart

Process Environment - Online Collaboration

The process environment for online collaboration is explained in Figure 6.

Fig. 6: Process Environment – Online Collaboration

 60 / S. NAGARAJAN, K. GANESH, S. C. LENNY KOH AND R. RAJESH

Process Environment - E-Mail Integration

The process environment for e-mail integration is explained in Figure 7.

Fig. 7: Process Environment - E-mail Integration

4.2 Knowledge Storage

This section focuses on the storage of knowledge items as per the taxonomy and
metadata definitions. Taxonomy defines the way the data is stored in the back end
systems of the KM repository. It gives a classification of the way the data is catalogued
as show in Fig.8.
The Knowledge Items present in KM site should be linked to more than one category
logically. This is as defined in the Metadata definitions. Access control to the document
should be established to the user level. The primary requirement here is to provide for
distributed data content with authorization and access control.

Key Roles

• KM Administrator
• User

Process Environment - Knowledge Storage

The process environment for knowledge storage is explained in Figure 8.
 PROCESS DESIGN FRAMEWORK FOR IMPLEMENTATION OF KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT… / 61

Fig. 8: Process Environment - Knowledge Storage

4.3 Knowledge Retrieval

This is the process which explains how a user should be able to search and filter the
contents on a variety of parameters, so as to finally reach the Knowledge items desired
by him. The results will be based on Taxonomy and Metadata definitions.
The concept of search & filtering is producing a relatively small subset containing
a high proportion of relevant documents whereby the user can locate the required
information quickly. The search & filtering could be on the following parameters:
• Keyword
• Taxonomy
• Search in Document Indices
• Expert Search
Keyword: This is the basis of the search. In the search, the entered keywords
would be matched to the starting strings of the article keywords.
 62 / S. NAGARAJAN, K. GANESH, S. C. LENNY KOH AND R. RAJESH

Taxonomy: Search could be done only on selected domain (taxonomy section).

The list of domains will be maintained by the KM Administrator as a master list. The
users will get a pick list to select one or more domains.
Search in Document Indices: This search involves the catalogued document
attributes or Metadata along with the full body text search. If ‘Metadata’ is selected,
then the entered keywords would be searched in the ‘Title, Abstract, Keywords’ fields
of all the documents in the KM database. These fields will have to be entered when
content is being uploaded into the system.
In case of a ‘Full text search’ the system would search through the contents of the
documents and articles subject to the suitable search engine being used.
After the user submits, the selection, the result page would be displayed. The
resulting articles would be categorized based on the prevailing taxonomy and displayed
in descending order of the last modified date, in each subsection. In the first page after
the search, the number of results found in each section would be listed. The title of the
section would be hyperlinked, and on clicking on the title, the full list of knowledge
items in that section would be listed in a new window. The user can then view/ download
the individual knowledge items, based on his access rights.
Expert Page: Based on the keywords entered by the user for the search, the system
will also search the catalogued expert pages for the matching keywords. If identified,
links to those expert pages would also be shown on the search results page. To allow
this link to be established, the KM Administrator would need to assign the keywords
for each expert, in the expert definition databases as shown in Fig.9.

Fig. 9: Process Environment – Expert Page

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Key Roles

• KM Administrator
• Expert
• User

Process Environment - Expert Page

The process environment for expert page is explained in Figure 9.

4.4 Knowledge Administration

This section defines the activities/ functions that the KM Administrator team has to
perform to maintain KM. The activities are defined section-wise below.
Taxonomy: The current taxonomy definitions are based on the discussions with
business executives of manufacturing organization and it is only representative of the
present business scenario. It is quite likely that the taxonomy will undergo changes in
the course of time as the KM gets refined with use in manufacturing organization. In
case there is a change in the taxonomy, KM Administrator would need to move the
contents accordingly. KM Administrator could do the following tasks:
• Add new taxonomy items
• Delete taxonomy items
• Move contents from one head to another head
Retrieval: The KM Administrator will have to continuously track the usage of the
contents in KM and accordingly create or modify the domains / categories in the master
list. This will have to done primarily with the view of making it easier for the users to
access the right information quicker.
Incentive Plans: It is the task of the KM Administrator to facilitate the incentive
plans for KM. KM Administrator with the help of the Administrator module should do
the following tasks:
• Generate Reports on the contributions and usage for the appropriate month/
quarter & level of the organization and run the report.
• Select the Contributor/ User of the month.
• Plan and facilitate to provide the incentives for the respective outcomes.
Structured Knowledge: The KM Administrator will receive inputs from the users/
experts by email or hard copies of structured knowledge items (office files or .PDF
files) on a regular basis. The KM Administrator would need to do the following tasks:
 64 / S. NAGARAJAN, K. GANESH, S. C. LENNY KOH AND R. RAJESH

• Upload the content with set of attributes

• Delete the content from the repository when required.
• Convert chat and bulletin board transcripts into FAQs, Best Practices,
Problems & Solutions and upload into relevant portions of the repository
• Decide the relevant E Mails collected and convert to ‘Knowledge’ and store in
the repository.
• Follow up for the Knowledge items as part of the process tracking and upload
into the repository.
The output from this process is the uploaded content will appear in the KM
repository under selected taxonomy item.
Unstructured Knowledge: The inputs for this process are the chats, discussion
forums etc. which are as defined in the unstructured knowledge capture process. The
following tasks would be performed by the KM Administrator as part of this process:
• Employee Chats
 Set up chat sessions with expert users and inform to all concerned
 Invite concerned persons for the chat
 Moderate chat sessions
 Review a chat transcript and convert to a FAQ and post into the repository.
 Follow up for answering of the open questions in the chats
• Discussion Forums
 Create a new topic for discussion.
 Delete expired topics and irrelevant responses (at least for topics owned by
KM)
 Review the whiteboard discussions & post into KM repository
 Review the e-mails for knowledge items and post into the KM repository.
• Convert online collaboration discussions into FAQs and post in the KM repository
• House keeping activities to delete old/irrelevant content.
This process will not only facilitate the capture and storage of unstructured
knowledge within the manufacturing organization but also ensure that relevant
information reaches the concerned employees about chats and discussions in the form
of mails and flashes on the site so that employees are kept aware of the happenings.
Organization Learning: This process provides for identifying the knowledge items
related to organization learning and posting the same into the appropriate sections.
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The primary objective of this process must be to upload relevant content and tag it to
be visible on the Organizational Learning section of the KM site.
Expert Management: As part of this process, the KM Administrator would need
to do the following tasks:
• Expert identification
• Uploading of all expert’s detail to the site
• Mapping of subjects/topics to Expert
• Conversion of Expert chats to FAQ
• Feedback rating & review to maintain expert’s rating
• Additional inputs to Expert to make the expert pages complete
The primary objective of this process must be to identify and upload relevant
information on experts in the organization on various subjects tag it to be visible on
the Expert Management section of the KM site.

4.5 Key Performance Indicators (KPI)

As part of this process, the KM Administrator would be responsible to track the
performance of the KM process on a regular basis.
The administrator will use the reporting features of the KM system to generate
reports specific to some key performance indicators (KPI) as defined below. These reports
will then be analyzed and projected to the management as inputs for decision making
and further improvements/changes to KM.
The KPIs that need to be tracked for KM are:
1. System Specific KPIs:
a. Number of Log-Ins into the KM Portal
b. Number of hits per section / subsection
c. Number of views/downloads per Knowledge item
d. Number of contributions
2. CSO related KPIs:
a. Number of documents related to each of the Corporate Strategic Objectives
(CSO).
b. Exception reports for tracking CSO which do not have any knowledge items or
have consistently low (less than five per month) knowledge inputs.
3. Expert performance indicators:
a. Number of reviews/ approvals by the expert
 66 / S. NAGARAJAN, K. GANESH, S. C. LENNY KOH AND R. RAJESH

b. Number of pending reviews/approvals

c. Mean time taken by the expert to review and approve a document.
4. Significant contributors/users for a period and what are their contributions. In
this context significant contributors/users would be the first fifteen top rated
contributors/users.
5. User names with names and dates of visit to the site, who has read/downloaded
which knowledge item.
The management should set targets against each of the above KPIs. Following
guidelines can used to initiate the measures initially.
• Before going live ensure that there is a balance of knowledge items available
in the system across all sections and subsections. (For example this can be
taken to be at least 3 documents against each of the CSO distributed across
all sections such that in every section there is at least three knowledge items
available. This is only an indicative measure. The actual target will have to be
set by manufacturing organization based on the priorities and significance of
its corporate goals).
• After three months of going live, the performance against each of the above
KPIs have to be measured and refined. At this stage more specific targets
based on the observations from the past months will have to set against each
of the KPI.
• The KPIs have to be tracked regularly and reported every month. Further the
KPIs have to be refined every 6 months subsequently.

5. SUMMARY
Implementation of knowledge management involves the identification and analysis of
available and required knowledge assets and knowledge asset related processes, and
the subsequent planning and control of actions to develop both the assets and the
processes so as to fulfill organizational objectives. At the strategic level the organization
needs to be able to analyze and plan its business in terms of the knowledge it currently
has and the knowledge it needs for future business processes. At the operational level,
the process design is very critical and it forms the backbone for the implementation of
knowledge management solution. Devised generic process design framework can be
used as a basis for any manufacturing organization and from there the process design
can be improved further according to the needs and objectives of an individual
organization. Knowledge management is a continuous process and not a one time
activity. It is thus very essential that any organization follows a framework of activities
as part of its Knowledge Management process.
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