Knowledge Management for Industrial Research Processes of an Industrial Research Center Christian Frank1 + 2, Mickael Gardoni2 1
EADS Corporate Research Center, 12, rue Pasteur 92152 Suresnes, France
[email protected] 2 GILCO Laboratory, INPF-ENSGI, 46, av. Félix Viallet, 38000 Grenoble, France
[email protected]
Abstract. Knowledge management can support industrial research processes. Indeed, these industrial research processes are situated between a system of operational units, requiring and using research results, and a system of technological providers and academic laboratories. The knowledge flow between these systems is exposed to certain industrial constraints. The research center needs to optimize internal and external knowledge flows. In this purpose we identified a knowledge typology of industrial researchers. Based on a research process model, the knowledge typology and a theoretical knowledge management model we propose a portal solution. This portal solution allows manipulating information and knowledge more flexible in order to assure a certain dynamic for the knowledge management system. In future work we will integrate a knowledge evaluation process to focus on this dynamical aspect. This article discusses the introduction of a knowledge management system for industrial research processes at the EADS Corporate Research Center.
1 Introduction For companies the managing of knowledge constitutes a strategic perspective [2]. If knowledge and know-how are not under control, they represent an element of weakness. On the other hand, if they are under control, they become a resource and a strategic factor for continues improvement of product and process quality and for the development of new knowledge [4]. An industrial research center stands between an external information provider system (e.g. technology suppliers, academic laboratories, etc), and an industrial operational system, (operational units like the design office, the assembly factories, etc). The industrial operational system represents the most important final user of the industrial research results and thus can be considered as the industrial research customer. An information exchange process takes place between the operational system and the external information provider system with the industrial research center in the middle of this process (Fig. 1).
Fig. 1. Industrial research processes – a macroscopic description
The role of industrial research is to experiment, illustrate and validate models with new technological and methodological solutions, to combine them in order to propose new possible solutions for the requirements coming from the operational system. The role consists of creating new technological and methodological competencies and knowledge and to transfer them into the industrial operational system [1]. The position of industrial research implies information and knowledge flows. These flows have to respect certain constraints. In the next chapters we will expose knowledge relevant problems for industrial research and show how we count to face these problems with a knowledge management solution.
2 Problem Description and Objectives The fact that industrial research activities are directly linked to the customer environment and the information supplier environment causes external influences and constraints on the internal research processes [6]. Products and processes of the customers are under constraints like costs, quality, risks and delay. These constraints have a direct influence on industrial research processes: the results of the industrial research processes are dedicated to improve products and processes of the customers and thus need to respect the customers constraints. The industrial research customer constraints become the industrial research constraints. These constraints on research processes affect the information flow between the different systems and the management of knowledge: the control of knowledge in industrial research processes under constraints gets a crucial factor. Knowledge management relevant problems can concern (some examples coming from interviews with industrial researchers and research managers): · The knowledge acquisition: find external knowledge to integrate in research projects, get access to new internal knowledge, be always informed about the needs of the operational units, etc. · Knowledge distribution: reach and contact the right people, exchange new ideas with experts, inform operational units about new research results, etc.
· Knowledge preservation: preserve knowledge when people are leaving, update rapidly new arrivals and assure knowledge continuity, formalize and keep feedback concerning the application of research results, etc. · Knowledge evaluation: use the right and useful knowledge to produce new knowledge, know the maturity of internal knowledge compared to external knowledge, etc. These problems need to be addressed in order to improve the efficiency of industrial research processes of a research center and to counter the existing constraints. In order to be able to control and manage the knowledge in industrial research processes we propose to introduce knowledge management. The objective is to propose a knowledge management system (or parts of a system) which demonstrates the feasibility of knowledge management functions useful for industrial research processes. Even if the introduction of such a system might imply reflections on knowledge management methods (communities of practices, communities of competences, etc.), our focus lies on system characteristics specific for industrial research processes. In the following chapters, we will basically present the achieved results concerning a requirement analysis, a process and knowledge structure analysis. The knowledge management solution proposition is not yet fully developed and thus needs further reflections.
3 Requirement Analysis – A Functional Analysis To reach our objective, we first conducted a requirement analysis with a group of researchers and research managers. In several meetings we tried to identify potential and desired KM functions, which should be provided by a KM system. These desired functions represent an important part of the knowledge management requirements and complete the expressed problems of the chapter above. The first part of the analysis is to determine the environment interfaces of a potential system. The environment interfaces should represent the environment of an industrial researcher: he is in interaction with external information suppliers, internal information suppliers, information resources concerning the customer requirements (operational units), and teams of researchers (Fig. 2). The potential functions of such a system, identified during the work sessions, combine and link the different interfaces (Fig. 2). The functions are described below:
Fig. 2. The environment interfaces of a potential knowledge management system for industrial research processes and its potential functions
· F1: The system should help to identify external industrial problems comparable with the problems of the research customers. The objective is to identify external industrial problems, industrial requirements among industrial partners, competitors, etc. similar to the problems and requirements of internal research customers. Certain external problems could be equivalent to the implicit customer needs not yet identified. · F2: The system should help to identify external solution proposals (methods and technologies) for the research customer requirements. The objective here is to support the identification of technologies and external methods which could support the solution development for customer problems. · F3: The system displays the gap between the research activities conducted by external research organizations and the internal research activities. This function allows the visualization of an evaluation of external research activities compared to internal research activities concerning a research subject. It could show in which way external research problems are treated. After such a comparison, it would be possible to decide whether to integrate external research activities and results and to orientate the internal research activities. The knowledge management system can thus contribute to an evaluation on for knowledge and supports to select between obsolete, basic and new knowledge [8]. · F4: The system helps to identify external elements (concepts, methods, technologies, tools, and competencies) in order to carry out internal research activities.
· F5: The system should show in which way the research activities cover the customer requirements. The objective here is to visualize the difference between the customer research requirements and the requirements treated and covered with internal research activities. This difference indicates the need for future research activities and the need to deepen already existing research activities and initiates actions to create new knowledge. · F6: The system should support a sense of sharing among internal researchers working in the same research area. In order to create this sense of sharing between researchers, it will be necessary to develop competencies references, to rely similar professions, similar project environments, and perhaps transverse organizations [8]. · F7: The system should help to identify internal elements (concepts, methods, technologies, tools, and competencies) that help to carry out internal research activities. These potential functions transform the requirements in wishes for a knowledge management system. They are the starting point for process analysis and solution development.
4 Industrial Research Processes – Process Analysis and Knowledge Flow Description In order to introduce a KM system, it is important to understand the functioning of processes and information flows. In this purpose we analyzed in more detail the organizational structure, the research processes, the information and knowledge flow and the knowledge structure of industrial researcher. 4.1 The Organizational Structure of the Research Environment The research activities are embedded in our case in an organizational structure. The most important parts of this organizational structure concern a quality certification, a stable intranet structure with its document organization, a regularly reporting about the project advancements and regular project meetings and reviews. The quality certification implied to introduce procedures describing and defining certain work processes and defining the production of certain documents. Documents have to be produced at the beginning of a research project (research programs) after every meeting concerning this project (minutes of meetings), at milestones and at the end of the projects (reports). This guarantees a minimum of information distribution and preservation. The quality framework is supported by an intranet which helps to manage the different documents required by the quality procedures. The documents are structured according to the research project structure. This concerns also external relevant documents important for certain research projects. Regularly project reporting and review meetings are another mean to assure the distribution of the information concerning new research project results.
Of course, this structure is very specific to our work environment. The fact of having quality certification for research processes might not be easy to accept for every researcher [3]. The introduction of quality certification implies to respect certain organizational rules and predefined processes. This might be seen as a handicap for research activities. Nevertheless, the trend nowadays is to introduce quality certifications for more and more academic and industrial research organizations [3]. This basic framework will play an important role for our further analysis and solution development. It is possible to better analyze already existing knowledge and information flows. On the other hand this framework with its existing and defined information flow and document creation is an opportunity to build knowledge management solution on existing practices and structures and to take them into account for new solution development. 4.2
The activity view of industrial research processes and the knowledge flows
Industrial research processes are characterized by the anticipation of industrial operational unit requirements. This obliges the industrial research units to know and understand the customers’ problem environment. Providers of new external technologies and information constitute knowledge resources. A research process is initiated by a need to improve processes and/or products of the operational system. A research process can also be initiated by the discovery of the importance of new innovative concepts. According to the maturity degree of the researcher’s knowledge, the research process can be decomposed into three phases: investigate, focus, transfer: · The activities concerning the investigation characterize the identification of new research domains, the observation of new technological possibilities and activities and aims to constitute state-of-the-arts about new technologies and new methods. Therefore, the industrial researcher transfers and transforms external information or external knowledge into internal knowledge: a knowledge flow from the external environment to the internal environment. The monitoring activity is very important for this phase of the research process. Before transferring external knowledge into internal knowledge, the researcher evaluates the utility of the external knowledge for his future research activities. · The objective of the next phase is to focus on new technologies and methods and to acquire new knowledge and competencies. Experimenting and illustrating prototypes by using new technologies and methods help to acquire new knowledge and competencies. The activity allows combining internal and external knowledge with given problems. This combination is characterized by learning processes for researchers, by knowledge exchanges among researchers and initiatives of innovations. · Transfer driven research is directly related to the operational units requirements. The objective is to experiment illustrators, prototypes and methods with concrete data coming from the operational units. By proposing improvements for the identified problems, the research units transfer their knowledge into the operational units. As in the “focalization” phase, researchers combine internal and external
knowledge to come up with suitable solutions. However, the role of internal knowledge dominates the role of external knowledge. Internal knowledge, coming from exploratory research activities and the experimental phase has to be adapted to research customer problems. This transfer of knowledge is also accompanied by learning processes for researchers: the feedback of the operational units about implemented research solutions (Fig. 3).
Fig. 3. Industrial research process – an activity view
4.3 The Twelve Knowledge Types of Industrial Researchers Managing knowledge in industrial research processes requires knowing which knowledge is manageable. Besides, it is also important to know which knowledge will be necessary to conduct research activities and to come up with research results. These two aspects encouraged us to find a knowledge typology of industrial researchers necessary to develop research results. In order to identify the different knowledge types, we analysed documents and held interviews with researchers. This analysis was based on a systemic analyse: which are the people concerned in a project, which decisions are made, what are the different activities, where are information shared. The typology tries to describe and categorize 12 knowledge types as objects (Fig. 4).
Fig. 4. The knowledge types describing the necessary knowledge of an industrial researcher to conduct and fulfill research activities
K1 describes the researcher’s knowledge concerning his own research developments and products. K2 describes the researcher’s knowledge concerning the process and daily activities to reach research results and products. K3 describes the researcher’s knowledge he has about existing external knowledge resources. These resources are a part of the external information provider system (e.g. technology suppliers academic and industrial laboratories, etc.) and provide the researcher with new information and knowledge, characterized with K4. K4 is the concrete information a researcher has to know and to take into account for new research results. We distinguished three main categories in K4: the researcher has knowledge about academic / industrial laboratories, technology suppliers, and external user (competitors / partners). For each main category we found sub-categories describing knowledge objects. As an example, the knowledge objects for technology suppliers are orientations, innovative concepts, methods, tools, means, and experimentations. This allows us to precise the knowledge of researchers and to identify, where knowledge does exists and where is a lack of knowledge. For the other knowledge types we defined similar categories. K5 describes the researcher’s knowledge he needs to access to external information and resources. He knows how and where to get external information for his research activities and objectives. He owns knowledge about conferences, articles, presentations, etc. K3, K4 and K5 describe the entire knowledge of an industrial researcher concerning his knowledge about the external information provider system.
K6 describes the researcher’s knowledge concerning the internal research unit resources. These internal resources (people, projects and units) provide him with knowledge or information (K7) which he includes in his research activities and results. K8 describes the researcher’s knowledge which enables him to access the internal information and resources. K6, K7 and K8 are the counterpart of K3, K4 and K5 and describe the entire knowledge of an industrial researcher concerning his knowledge about the internal industrial research system. K9 describes the researcher’s knowledge about operational unit resources. These problems and needs are characterized with K10. With his knowledge K11 the industrial research knows how and where to access to the operational unit information and research needs. K12 describes the researcher’s knowledge concerning the global group context of his research results.
5 The Knowledge Management Architecture The knowledge management architecture we propose is based on three models: the industrial research process model (chapter 4.2), the knowledge typology model (chapter 4.3) and on an external theoretical knowledge management model form Romhardt [9]. As a basic model we will use the industrial research model which helps to categorize the different research activities in three phases : investigate, focus, transfer. These activities can be supported by knowledge management activities as described in the knowledge management model of Romhardt (Fig. 5).
Fig. 5. Knowledge management model according to Romhardt [9]
In order to support the different knowledge management activities in the different research phases we propose a toolbox for each activities of the knowledge
management model. This toolbox enables the execution of the different activities from the knowledge management model. Each toolbox contains an information input field, a specific toolbox area according to the activity of the knowledge management model and an information output field. The information input and output field are structured according to the knowledge typology model. As the typology model represents the necessary knowledge for research activities this structure assures the availability of critical knowledge. This three level architecture allows to coordinate the different knowledge management activities and to integrate a process view, an activity view and a knowledge management view (Fig. 6).
Fig. 6. Knowledge management architecture for research processes
For each research activity we define the different knowledge management activities with their different inputs, outputs and tool functions. As an example we will describe the investigation phase of the research process and illustrate some inputs, outputs and tool functions for the identification and acquisition activity of the knowledge management model. As we have seen in chapter 4.2 during the investigation phase, the industrial researcher looks for new concepts, new information in general and new needs in the operational units. According to the knowledge typology model the industrial researchers take into account the external, internal and operational unit environment. According to the knowledge management model, he first undertakes identification activities. This means using intelligent Internet research machines, consulting internal expert indexes (ex. yellow pages), internal information retrievals systems (document management system), etc. As an output of this activity he has a list of potential contacts with internal and external experts, a list of interesting internal and external documents, a list of potential interesting conferences to visit, etc. After the identification of these information sources the industrial researcher needs to transform the information into internal knowledge. This happens during the acquisition activity of the knowledge management model. The output of the identification activity is the input of the acquisition activity. The tools for this activity are a mixture between organizational tools and technical tools: in order to make use of the potential contacts
the industrial researcher has to meet people, hold presentations to get feedback, assist to conference and read the collected information. As one of the technical tools for this activity we provide an electronic form to review the exchanged information in meetings (minutes of meetings) and to summarize the different internal and external documents. This electronic form is structured according to the knowledge typology. As an example we give the electronic form describing the information concerning a technology supplier (see also detailed description in chapter 4.3) (Fig. 7).
Fig. 7. Electronic form structuring the information concerning a technology supplier according to the knowledge typology
As output the industrial research creates structured information according to the knowledge typology. This information can be considered as important information describing the knowledge of the industrial researcher concerning a technology supplier. Technically it is also possible to create an official minute of meeting according to the quality certification requirements. After the acquisition activities follow the other activities according to the knowledge management model. The different tool functions are integrated in a portal solution. The above demonstrated forms play an important role among the tools. We propose similar forms to formulate other documents or reports. Important is that via the portal it is possible to manipulate the different “information objects” created by the forms in order to link different information, to oppose and combine different information. This is a mean to create new knowledge in a more effective way.
6 Conclusion and perspectives In order to realize a knowledge management solution for industrial research processes we first described the different research activities in a research process model and illustrated the knowledge of industrial researchers in a knowledge typology model.
With a functional analysis we tried to describe, in a "systematic way", the demanded functions of a potential knowledge management system. Based on these models and the existing organization environment (ex. quality certification) and with an external theoretical knowledge management model we constructed a knowledge management solution for industrial research processes. For the different research activities we proposed different knowledge management solutions. All these solutions are integrated in a portal. The knowledge management architecture takes into account most of the requirements. There is a better structure of information and there exists a better overview of the different external and internal environments where the different information come from. The structure of information according to the knowledge typology of the industrial researchers allows manipulating information without manipulating whole documents. This facilitates comparing external information like information coming from technical suppliers with information coming from operational units (function F2 of the functional analysis). As a perspective, we will now start working on knowledge evaluation. A knowledge evaluation process could constitute a basic framework for the functions included in a knowledge management system for industrial research processes [7]. The evaluation process is important for innovative processes: considering external knowledge as important can lead to new research activities in order to obtain the same knowledge. The knowledge evaluation in specific research context and for given problems can initiate new research projects which can lead to the development of new knowledge. A knowledge evaluation mechanism is part of the basic functions for a knowledge management system for industrial research processes and gives a dynamic framework to knowledge management.
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