An
Approach To Integrating Knowledge Management Into The
Product Development Process
Qianwang Deng1,2, Dejie Yu1 , 1 Hunan
University, Hunan, 2 Magdeburg University, Magdeburg
ABSTRACT:
The concept of knowledge management (KM) has been used in various disciplines. However, there are still many challenges in the implementation of KM, such as: employees have no time for KM. An approach on integrating knowledge management into the product development process is proposed to alleviate the challenges. The product development process is selected as the case study field because of its characters of knowledge-intensive and core competence in enterprises. Product development process modeling is suggested as a background of KM. When a process model is defined, the tasks involved in the product development process are also clarified. Knowledge is deployed as a part of resources to implement the tasks. Therefore, product development process modeling can help people structure knowledge and employees linking to each daily-work task in the product development process. In this way, knowledge is classified into five knowledge subjects: product, process, method, tool, and domain. Furthermore, each of knowledge subjects is divided into three types of knowledge: course, practice, and expertise location. In addition, knowledge management process is considered as a special kind of business process which is an accompanying sub-process of the product development process. The integration between KM process and the product development process gives not only guidance for managing knowledge activities, but also an optimization for product development process modeling. At the end, a KM system architecture is discussed to construct a computer-based knowledge assistant environment for product development.
Keywords: knowledge, knowledge management process, product
development, process model, integration
1. Introduction
In the last years, the concept of knowledge management (KM) has been used in various disciplines. First, researchers attempt to understand the nature of knowledge. Romhardt (1998) collects approximately 40 dichotomies of knowledge like individual versus collective, procedure versus declarative. Nonaka and Takeuchi (1995) divide knowledge into tacit and explicit knowledge. They also explain the four stages of organizational knowledge conversion: socialization (from tacit knowledge of person A to tacit knowledge of person B), externalization (from tacit knowledge to explicit knowledge), combination (from explicit knowledge to explicit knowledge), and internalization (from explicit knowledge to tacit knowledge). Quinn et al (1996) suggests the following knowledge typologies based on purpose and use: know-what, how, where, when, who, and why. Van der Spek and Spijkervet (1997) define that Knowledge is the whole set of insight, experiences and procedures that are considered correct and true and that therefore guide the thought, behavior, and communication of people. Vajna (2001) describes a knowledge taxonomy, which shows that the link between external data and information to the individual knowledge is determined by rules. In this paper, knowledge in context of product development is understood as an intangible intelligent asset which forms a part of enterprise’s resource to fulfill the business process task. It implies to all scientific cognition about domain, experiences of individual or collective, and other abilities which enable product developers to find solutions of business process task in the field of product development.
Second, many procedures and methods are suggested for knowledge management in companies. The KM practices of Ernst & Young provide a range of knowledge services and solutions that focus exclusively on strategy, process and content management. The KM method of KPMG (1999) focuses on optimizing the seven key knowledge processes within an organization: creation, application, exploitation, sharing, encapsulation, sourcing and learning. Its services cover awareness raising, strategy, systems integration and development, business process engineering and change management. Mentzas et al. (2003) review process-centric and product-centric approaches in KM. The product-centric approach implies that knowledge is a thing that can be located and manipulated as an independent object. This approach mainly focuses on products and artifacts containing and representing knowledge, which usually means managing documents, their creation, storage and reuse in computer-based corporate memories. The process-centric approach puts emphasis on ways to promote, motivate, encourage, nurture or guide the process of knowing. This approach understands KM as a social communication process, and knowledge is shared mainly through person-to-person contacts. In fact, most practices of KM adopt the method of integration of these two approaches.
Third, environment influence factors of KM are
explored, which includes corporate culture, and management factors. Mertins et al. (2003) suggest that each
employee is influenced by the corporate culture with a stress on the culture of
communication and cooperation in his work surroundings. The analysis of
corporate culture aims at the description and analysis of psychological and
organizational variables intervening in knowledge management process.
Management influences include leadership, control, measurement, financial, and
motivation (Liebowitz, 1999; Holsapple
and Joshi, 2003; Holsapple, 2003). Most failure
practices of KM implementation are the results of lack of corresponding
corporate culture and management criteria. In addition, as to
organizational perspective of KM, Liebowitz and
Beckman (1998) attempt to define the characteristics of a knowledge
organization. Many other authors suggest the benefits of the network
organizational form in supporting collaboration and knowledge sharing (McGill
and Slocum, 1994; Martin, 1995).
Fourth, computer science researchers concentrate to explain how information and communication technology (ICT) and ICT-based KM system (KMS) can be developed to assist and support knowledge management process and thus to contribute to performance improvements. Information and communication technologies are mostly researched in the field of knowledge engineering and artificial intelligence, and also are still dominant approaches to KM (Ruggles, 1997; Dephi, 2002; Helbig, 2001; Eppler, 2003; Mertins et al., 2003; Mentzas et al., 2003; Tsui, 2003).
Although many approaches have been suggested about KM, there are still many challenges in the implementation of KM. Part of them are listed as following:
¨ employees have no time for KM
¨ organization’s processes are not designed for KM
¨ difficulties when preparing and structuring the knowledge
¨ lack of understanding of KM and benefits
¨ current culture does not encourage knowledge sharing
¨ lack of measurement, motivation, rewards to share knowledge
¨ lack of acceptance by the employees
This paper proposes an approach on integrating knowledge management into product development, which can be a part of solutions to alleviate the challenges. The product development process is selected as the case study field because of its characters of knowledge-intensive and core competence in corporate. On one hand, novice designers need KM to help learning all of the knowledge about product, process, methods, tools, experiences, skills, and design strategies in order to fasten their progress from novice to experienced designers. On the other hand, experienced designers also need KM to help quickly access to information and knowledge from other experts. To realize this purpose, KM is introduced into the field of product development, and a framework of integration knowledge management and product development is introduced in section 2. Furthermore, several focuses of the integration approach are explained in section 3. A product development process is analyzed through process modeling, which is suggested as a background of KM. When a process model is defined, the tasks in the product development process are also clarified. Therefore, product development process modeling can help people structure knowledge and human linking to each daily-work task in product development. Knowledge in product development is classified into five subjects, including knowledge about: product, process, method, tool, and domain. Furthermore, three types of knowledge are also grouped as: course, practice, and expertise location. In this approach, knowledge management process is considered as a special kind of business process which is an accompanying sub-process of the product development process. The integration between KM process and the product development process has also given an optimization for product development process modeling. At the end, a general KM system architecture is introduced to construct a knowledge assistant environment for product development.
2. A Framework Of Integration Between Knowledge Management And The Product Development Process
A holistic conceptual framework can be used for creating awareness about knowledge management, as well as a road map for ensuring the integrity of the knowledge effort. Figure 1 illustrates a framework of integration between knowledge management and the product development process.
The framework is divided into two parts: the upper part is business processes, and the lower part is knowledge management. In context of this paper, the business process implies to the product development process, which is the application domain of knowledge management. The two parts, KM and product development, are interlinked. During the product development process, employees seek for massive amounts of information and knowledge for application of dealing with the problem-solving tasks, and generate new knowledge. In this way, KM can be used to develop and enhance the product development process on an ongoing basis. KM component consists of five elements: knowledge asset, KM process, human resource, KM system, and environmental influence on KM (e.g., corporate culture, and management factors). In this paper, we only discuss the following topics based on the framework:
¨ Analyzing the product development process through process modeling
¨ Linking KM strategy with product development domain
¨ Structuring knowledge in product development through process model
¨ Integrating KM process into the product development process
¨ Integrating KM system into product development
Figure
1. A Framework Of Integration Of Knowledge And The Product Development
Process
3. Integrating Knowledge
Management Into Product Development
3.1. Background: Product
Development Process Modeling
In general, product development includes two views: product view and process view. Product view defines what a product is, whereas process view describes how a product is developed. It can also say, product view explains knowledge “knowing-what” and “who knows the product”; and process view illustrates “know-how” and “know-why” knowledge.
The original purpose of process modeling is to simulate and analyze a product development process, which can help people better understand, manage and optimize the product development process. In this paper, process modeling is used to classify and structure knowledge, and to help people understand how a product development process, employees, and knowledge are organized relating to each other together, and to reveal who needs what knowledge and who possesses what knowledge. The integration of KM process and the product development process gives a method for manipulating and controlling knowledge.
Figure
2. An
Ontology Of Product Development
An abstract simplified high-level ontology of product development is
illustrated by Figure 2. During
a product development process, there are many results at the intermediate-stages.
The results at the intermediate-stages are called product states. A product
ontology is modeled as a collection of many product states, such as
requirements, functions, principles, geometries, and manufacturing process
plan, etc. The conversion from a state to another state of a product is
realized by a process ontology. It is to say, a product object exists, at its state, while process elements
transform the product object by changing its states.
All of the product states compose a product model from multi-views, whereas all of the process elements constitute a process model.
According to the definition of Freisleben (2001), a process is a collection of many process elements (or activities) and their logical relationships. The logical relationships between process elements can be grouped into: sequence, parallel, alternative, couple, and loop. Process element is the basic component in a process model, which consists of some work-steps but can not be further divided into smaller.
There exist many process modeling methods, such as IDEF Family, EEPC
(Extended event-process chain), Petri Net, RAD (Role Activity Diagram), and DFD
(Data Flow Diagram), etc (Tang et al, 2002).
Among them most widely used is IDEF0. IDEF0 is a kind of activity diagram
method based on SADT (system analysis and design technology) (Mayer 1990). It
hierarchically repents activities of a system in the way of
“top-to-down”. According to IDEF0, a process model is composed of a
series of activities and their relationships. Figure 3 illustrates the
graphical representation of an activity, which includes the following
attributes: input, output, activity, control, and mechanism. “Input” means the needed data and
information for implementing an activity; “Output” means the generated data and information after
implementing an activity; “Activity” means the relationship between
“input” and “output”, which is a kind of transform from
“input” to “output”;
“Control” defines the constraints of an activity; and
“mechanism” explains the human or equipment involved in an
activity. In a word, “input” and “output” represent
what is going on in an activity; “Control” represents why an
activity is done like so; “Mechanism” represents how an activity is
implemented. The logical relationship
between activities is represented by arrows. IDEF0 constructs a hierarchical
process structure from top to down.
Figure
3. IDEF0 Activity Diagram
It should be stated that, because product development process modeling is only used to identify the tasks or activities in a product development process, the logical relationship between process elements, an important component in a process model, is ignored in this paper. The authors only care about the process elements, which clarify all of the tasks or activities in a product development process.
The product development process modeling in this research follows the knowledge-based process model (KPM) (Freisleben, 2001). The KPM collects approximately 50 generic process elements, which cover all of the stages of the product development process and are independent to product and corporate. The KPM is an initial combination of knowledge and the product development process. However, because the aim of KPM is only to provide a template for guiding product development process modeling, it does not think about the situation of integration between KM process and the product development process, and also does not provide more detail knowledge about methods and the skills or experience on tools usage which assist the employees dealing with their daily works. Here, we only use part of the generic process elements as a dimension of knowledge classification criteria.
3.2. Linking Knowledge
Management Strategy With Product Development
The goal of strategic planning is to focus quickly on knowledge that counts and delivers value to the company. Based on the corporate strategy and objectives, a clear KM strategy needs to be defined to help the firm to set forth the criteria for choosing the knowledge assets that it plans to pursue and how it will go about capture, sharing and using them.
Here, KM strategic goals are the following:
¨ Managing knowledge as an intangible intelligential asset which should be managed as a part of an enterprise’s resource, just like an equipment. As discussed in the last section, resource is the prove of implementing process element. Resource includes two categories: tangible assets resource such as equipments, and intangible intelligent asset such as human and knowledge. To manage knowledge as a kind of asset, corporate needs developing corresponding criteria to control the knowledge assets.
¨ Considering knowledge management process as a kind of business process. In the current corporate business processes, knowledge management process is not included among them. Therefore, employees always have no additional time or do not like spend additional time on knowledge management activities. It is the most emergent problem in current implementing knowledge management projects. Considering knowledge management process as a business process as well as integrating knowledge management process into the product development process is an approach to alleviate this challenge. An integrated process model between the product development process and knowledge management process will be discussed later.
¨ Managing knowledge to enhance product development capability. Product development capability is the core competence of corporations. The ultimate aim of all methods and tools (including knowledge management) applied in the product development process is to enhance product development capability, which is also one of the corporate strategies.
¨ Managing knowledge to enhance learning & creativity of individual & organization, which is a key measure indicator of companies.
3.3. Structuring Knowledge In Product Development Through Process Model
Figure 4.
Linking Knowledge To Product Development Process
Elements
The product development process provides the context for knowledge asset. Figure 4 gives a simple example of product development sub-process model, which is composed of three process elements. Based on the process model, knowledge can be linked to each of the product development elements through some general knowledge acquisition methods, such as observation, interview, brainstorms, seminar and collecting from literatures, etc. Here, knowledge is a kind of intelligent assets as a part of resource for implementing each process element. Linking knowledge to the product development process elements helps:
¨ Analyzing or auditing previous existing companies’ knowledge corresponding to each element of the product development process
¨ Judging whether or not the knowledge regarding to each element of the product development process are currently scattered around the company;
¨ Understanding where, when and what knowledge is needed within each element of the product development process;
¨ Assisting decision of the suitable format of knowledge representation respective to each element of the product development process;
¨ Guiding the index of the structure of knowledge in repository;
¨ Optimizing the product development process model which enhances KM within existing the product development process.
According to Figure 2, knowledge asset in the product development process can be divided into product knowledge and process knowledge of product development. Product knowledge describes the states of the product, such as knowledge about product market, requirements, functions, behavior principles, structures, specification, service documents, and instruction manuals etc.
Process knowledge of product development describes how a product is developed and why it is so developed. It includes:
¨ Knowledge about the product development process, which traces the process of product development and illustrates the “how-design” history. It is also called as product process best practice;
¨ Knowledge about the product development process elements, which guides the product development process modeling and identifies what tasks should be done to realize a product;
¨ Knowledge about procedure/methods applied in the product development process, which explains “why-so-design” and “how-design”;
¨ Knowledge about skills of using technology/tools in the product development process, which is about “how-design”;
¨ Knowledge about persons who have experience and expertise, which locates where knowledge is;
¨ Knowledge about domain, such as mechanical engineering, electronic engineering, hydraulic etc.
In conclusion, Figure 5 depicts categories of knowledge in the product development process. The knowledge is divided into five subject kinds of knowledge: product, process, method, tool, and domain.
Knowledge about product describes what a product is (paradigms of product). It includes: product and product portfolio description, product structures, bills of materials, customer requirements, specifications, functional structures, principles, geometry(drawings), and manufacturing process plans etc.
Knowledge about process includes two kinds of knowledge. One is knowledge about the whole product development process, which illustrates how a product is developed, and traces the historical process of product development. The other is knowledge about process elements, which declares all of the activities (or tasks) in the product development process.
Figure
5. Knowledge Categories In The Product Development Process
Knowledge about method constructs a large part of knowledge assets, which shows how a product is developed and why a product is so developed. It consists of various methods, techniques, practices, and methodologies proposed to carry out product development more effectively. For a particular company one of challenges of KM is to identify the knowledge about methods that are most relevant to the process elements (activities) on which the company should focus its efforts.
Knowledge about tools presents
concepts, skills, and experiences of all the tools that are most relevant to
the process elements. There exists three groups of
computer-based tools (application systems). One group of the tools is
specifically focused on creating product and process definition data (e.g.
systems such as CAD, DFX, CAE,