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What is a Supply Chain?
A supply chain is an entire system of producing and delivering a product or service,
from the very beginning stage of sourcing the raw materials to the final delivery of the
product or service to end users. Supply chain lays out all aspects of the production
process, including the activities involved at each stage, information that is being
communicated, natural resources which are transformed into useful materials, human
resources, and other components that go into the finished product or service.
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Each stage of a supply chain is essentially a different industry, for example, raw material
extraction and manufacturing. The supply chain enables a company to understand others
that are involved in each of the stages, and therefore provides some insights on the
attractiveness or competitiveness in these industries the company might want to enter in the
future.
Understanding Analytics
“Analytics-driven insight, or a procurement function relies on big data and advanced
analytics to drive freight rate insight and bolster decision-making. The hallmarks of
information-centric, world-class procurement organizations are the presence of a
sophisticated information/data architecture that makes effective data analysis possible;
planning and analysis capability that is dynamic and information-driven; and performance
measurement that is aligned with the business.
Without an advanced information management capability, agility is impossible. Agile
operations require a “sensory” system that monitors external conditions, plus analytical
capabilities that comprehend this data within the business context. This flow of feedback
information is the basis for business decision-making,” according to a study from The Hackett
Group.
Enhanced procurement, for example, is one of the many benefits that comes from data
analysis. When procuring services, it’s a matter of having access to the right information at the
right time and being able to act on it.
This actionable data is driving the change within the transportation industry, which has
remained relatively unchanged for the past several decades. Understanding the full measure
of your business, being able to identify key metrics and lay out a plan for improvement; are the
essence of big data and analytics.
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Greater profitability: Use analytics to identify targets for reducing or avoiding costs;
improve utilization rates, efficiencies and material usage.
Better quality: Use advanced analytic models to enable a deeper level of insight that
can better associate machine performance data to quality results
Better customer service: Use real-time data to better anticipate customer behavior
and pre-emptively modify production schedules, tailor deliveries, or deploy inventories
where needed.
Improved working capital: Use analytics to evaluate the end-to-end supply chain to
optimize inventory
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According to eft’s survey, location, security and temperature are the top three types of
information companies are looking to gain from IoT in their supply chain. However, as noted by
eft, location is becoming a standard and in today’s environment, companies are looking to
differentiate themselves and as a result, other types of data such as speed, humidity levels
and vibration will continue to gain in popularity.
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Market research firm, IDC, estimates the IoT global market will reach $1.7 trillion by 2020. As
such, supply chains are adopting this concept at a quicker rate as supply chains become
more customer-centric.
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Radwa
How to motivate people to contribute to a
Knowledge Management System?
A good knowledge base is a great asset that should be found in every business'
arsenal. However, simply incorporating this concept into your business surroundings is
not going to solve all your problems.
People are generally afraid of new things. The reason for this lies in their fear of the
unknown. Familiarizing your workforce with knowledge base software is going to
skyrocket the amount of information sharing among teams of people.
The best way to grow is to actively learn new things, and this is where a knowledge
sharing system can help extremely. Let’s take a look at how you can encourage your
employees to share their knowledge via this system.
It’s true! Knowledge does equal power. But there’s a new caveat. Knowledge is only
powerful or valuable when it is continually refreshed and used. Knowledge sitting idle is
worthless. Knowledge has an increasingly short shelf life, and if it’s not used, it quickly
loses value - period. It is up to us as managers and practitioners to help people
understand the new value proposition in which knowing is at least as important (if not
more so) than established knowledge. What we need to know changes so quickly that
what is valuable today may be worthless tomorrow.
It’s important that people understand how knowledge sharing can benefit them
personally. Show them examples of how access to others’ knowledge can improve
their performance and how sharing what they know makes their knowledge more
valuable.
Consider this: If I share a product idea or a way of doing something with other people,
just the act of writing it down - of putting it into words - improves it. And verbalizing it
enables other people to access it, add to it and further improve it. In the end, I end up
with a better idea.
2. Provide education
The first step that needs to be taken is educating your workforce on all the important
things about the knowledge base. These are some points that are necessary to cover.
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● Overview – First thing’s first; people have to become familiar with what a
knowledge base is and what is its main purpose. Once employees become
familiar with this concept, it is going to be much easier for them to approach it.
● How to use – It is necessary to train your personnel on how the knowledge base
is used. Once they see how intuitive and easy it is to share their knowledge, they
will experience a change of mindset, as they are going to become completely
familiarized with the whole concept.
● Guide them to share the right type of knowledge – A majority of your employees
are going to be confused about what they should share among each other.
Showcase a couple of great examples of what is valuable knowledge and what
is not really that important. For example, a person who works in customer
support should share a pattern of issues that customers are reporting
occasionally. This will mean a lot to those who are working on making the
product or service better. Additionally, sharing information about the best
possible solutions is going to make it easier for colleagues to approach this type
of issue.
Most reward systems still reward individual effort and knowledge. If we want to create
a culture that supports knowledge creation, sharing and re-use, we must reward those
behaviors. It’s that simple.
There is no one way to structure compensation to support knowledge sharing. It
depends on your business strategies and objectives and where you are in your cultural
development. It also depends on the people involved and the things that motivate
them. The knowledge economy is no different from past economies in that there will
be some people motivated by money, others by knowledge, some by power, some by
freedom and so on. Good reward and recognition systems recognize that different
people are motivated by different things, and they take advantage of that fact. A
few specific techniques can help in this area.
Personalize knowledge studies have shown that one of the best ways to increase the
value of knowledge and the likelihood that it will be used is to link it to a real person.
For example, put the contributor’s name on it: "George Bailey’s Guide to Resolving
Well Problems," "Tom Browne’s Sales Techniques." If you don’t want to recognize
individuals specifically, you can do the same thing for a team: "Singapore Refinery’s
Safety Process," "The Everest Team’s Guide to SAP Implementation."
This subtle addition can make a huge difference. It increases the credibility of the
work, gives users someone to contact and dramatically improves the odds that the
information will actually be used. And it makes those who contributed the knowledge
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feel valued and appreciated. It maintains their sense of ownership and accountability,
and solves the "who gets the credit" problem.
Reward valuable knowledge: One of the mistakes we often make in knowledge
management is leading people to believe that simply contributing knowledge or
information is enough, and sometimes even worthy of reward. Just the other day, I
heard about a firm that paid a flat fee for submissions to their knowledge system,
regardless of the quality or relevancy of the submission. Although this may be a way to
fill up a database, what you are likely to end up with is a database full of worthless
information that no one can (or wants to) use.
Rewarding people for simply contributing - for putting knowledge down on paper or
into a database - is not enough. I’m not sure it even qualifies as knowledge. It’s kind of
like getting an award for showing up at work every day.
We need to redefine knowledge sharing credit to apply only to knowledge that’s
worth something. And who decides the value of knowledge? How about letting the
user decide? Let the internal market determine and regulate value.
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But we absolutely must integrate knowledge sharing into everyday work processes
and job requirements. Knowledge activities must not be perceived as additional
chores to complete at the end of the day.
By making knowledge sharing a formal part of job responsibilities, including it in job
descriptions and using it in appraisal programs, we begin to create a real knowledge
culture.
Fatma
Forms of Knowledge
It is generally accepted that there are many forms of knowledge, with the two main
classifications being explicit and tacit. “Explicit knowledge can be expressed in formal
and systematic language and can be shared in the form of data, scientific formulae,
specifications, manuals, and so forth.” (Nonaka et al., 2001) Tacit knowledge is a much
more elusive form of knowledge, existing in the minds of people, and often very
difficult to extract from those minds and articulate. Tacit knowledge could even be
described as hidden knowledge, as sometimes people are not even aware they
possess the knowledge. However, everyone possesses some explicit and some tacit
knowledge.
Organizations today recognize the need to integrate both explicit and tacit
knowledge in formal information systems. Tacit knowledge is viewed merely as
knowledge hard to articulate as opposed to articulate, explicit knowledge (Virtanen,
2013; Nonaka and Takeuchi 1995; Baumard 1999; Stewart, 1997). Tacit knowledge is
expressed a knowledge that is non-verbalized, instinctive, and implicit (Polanyi, 1967)
and has frequently been considered as a significant source for competitive
advantage from a resource-based view of the firm (Barney, 1991; Grant, 1996). In
contrast, explicit knowledge may be implied and articulated
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It is useful to analyze how activities of various departments and people correlate to
each other and form the value chain – from the first task to the output produced by
several specialists or department. A Knowledge Management System can enable your
business to make better business decisions. It is this data or information that can be
utilized to take critical decisions and enable certain employees to improve their overall
knowledge and skills. This is why it is very important to store the information and make it
accessible for the future course of the business. It is the knowledge management
systems that enable the organization to store the data, manage it and distribute it
among the workplace whenever needed.
system helps to make learning a habit and routine for an organization and creates a
kind of a culture at your workplace which is inclined towards self-assessment as well as
self-improvement. The knowledge gained through the process of knowledge
management systems makes use of experience to improve processes and streamline
operations.
regularly and actively through knowledge management systems also makes way for
innovation and cultural change. It enables workplace employees to express their
ideas and use creativity to perform tasks.
· Makes way for better decision making: The huge database of information and
knowledge is nothing less than an asset or wealth for your organization. Storing and
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Titan Industries:
Titan Industries, Bangalore, India, is the fifth largest integrated watch manufacturer
in the world. In addition, through leveraging its manufacturing expertise, Titan has
branched into components and subassemblies, machine building and automation
solutions, precision engineering for the aerospace and automobile sectors, tooling
solutions, electronic sub-assemblies and stylish prescription eyewear.
Titan’s KM vision is to institutionalize knowledge sharing using portals, communities of
practice, and its internal Quest magazine. Titan’s KM initiative is a blend of information,
collaboration and communication. As part of the development process, Titan
mapped knowledge assets and processes for each department. Customer knowledge
is also considered important, and thus is captured and used in the sales efforts in other
areas.
Enteg Infotech (now Altimetrik) was selected to develop the system (Ramesh, 2010).
Enteg used SAP Netweaver’s platform to provide flexibility, to fulfill current
requirements and lay the foundation for future enhancements. The Net Weaver Portal
component provided centralized access to all business-critical SAP and non-SAP
applications in one login and user interface. Enteg implemented both the KM and
Sales portal with SAP Enterprise Portal 7.0, a component of SAP Netweaver. In addition,
custom software was developed to meet unfulfilled business requirements.
All employees can share ideas, opinions and knowledge independent of physical
location or department base. Decisions are now made on the universal availability of
information. Titan expects this availability of information at the finger tips to further
accelerate its customer responsiveness to enable it to deliver innovative products and
services to its customers. The best feature, according to Titan, is that of managing
localized best practices.The Sales Portal provides management and the sales force
with an online sales information tracking tool. Now, Titan can direct appropriate sales
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General Electrics:
from high tech medical equipment to light bulbs. Their corporate culture encourages
research and development leading to mature products. As a result, Support Central
was designed to support their strategy. It is a single entry portal designed to give all
employees 24x7 access to a large array of knowledge repositories and a directory of
topic experts. This includes access to reports, white papers, cases, forums and chats.
Users can personalize their homepage to fit their individual needs. It is available via the
corporate intranet and is accessible by employees, contractors, vendors, and
suppliers. The objectives of Support Central are to:
● Provide each business with the ability to manage and maintain unique
knowledge repositories.
● Gain competitive advantage by capitalizing on existing knowledge within the
corporation.
2. Create useful communities (often called communities of practice) to handle
specific business
processes.
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culture.
1. Create a user-friendly central library that will improve the way GE does business.
3. Increase service to vendors, suppliers and customers and ultimately achieve cost
savings
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/220892138_Knowledge_Mana
gement_at_General_Electric_A_Technology_Transfer_Case_Study
the Best Practice Replication process in Ford’s most mature knowledge management
initiative. A second, growing knowledge management initiative is knowledge based
engineering . It is best described as an interface between the CAD system and a
database of knowledge about particular vehicle system being designed. If a design
engineer violates a rule based upon knowledge of that system , then the CAD flags
the area of concern and suggests proven alternatives. Any flag must be resolved as
the design process continues.
Ford also has other, traditional knowledge management efforts with substantial
repositories of data and information, with strict governance to maintain a high level of
credibility and relevance. This governance is designed to ensure that the information is
trustworthy and can be considered as knowledge.
Toyota:
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NASA:
NASA has deployed five separate KMS in the period from 2003 to 2008, although the
NASA knowledge management initiative was first begun in 2000. (Leonard & Kiron,
2002, p. 12) These KMS can be defined as:
1. NASA Portal and KMS for Space – Deployed in 2003, the NASA Portal was developed
to store and make available for recall a full range of digital documents. The NASA
Portal was a public facing web application, which was open for anyone to access,
either internally or externally (by the public).
3. NASA Engineering Network (NEN) – Originally rolled out in 2005, NEN is a
collaborative KMS which is used by engineers and project teams to warehouse date,
and communicate using instant messaging (based on the Jabber protocol).
4. Communities of Practice – This is a knowledge finder application which was
introduced for all employees in 2006. This is a very specialized KMS which allows
employees to locate other employees or departments with specific knowledge and
experience.
5. InsideNASA 2 – A 2007 update to the original 2004 KMS of the same name,
InsideNASA 2 is the NASA internal intranet, which has been updated to include social
networking features and document collaboration.
Additionally, since 1994, NASA has operated the Lessons Learned Information System
(LLIS), which unifies knowledge from multiple sources including projects, departments,
individuals and programs. All NASA program managers are required to update LLIS,
and to interrogate it on a regular basis. So we can clearly see that NASA had originally
opted for a strategic approach to knowledge management, providing needed
services to individual departments and key user groups. However, NASA has slowly
refined its multiple KMS systems to become more unified. Indeed, NASA is currently
working upon a well-defined knowledge management roadmap which is due to be
completed in 2025, which will result in NASA employees being able to capture
knowledge, and submit it to a unified KMS in real-time, either on Earth or in off world
outposts.
https://www.macwheeler.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/Academic-NASA-Knowl
edge-Management.pdf
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Schlumberger :
https://www.slb.com/resource-library/article/2015/enterprising-knowledge
Sales engineering team members are accelerating the time it takes them to close
deals by quickly finding answers to questions that would previously have taken
valuable time to track down.
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