Training

Preserving and re-using experience and knowledge from employees is a decisive task in industrial engineering. In this context the usage of tools for knowledge management is highly up-to-date, however a concrete implementation starts very unassertively in practise. The article discusses advisability and feasibility of a process-based knowledge management. A method of resolution in form of a knowledge infrastructure is worked out exemplary for the two phases “product planning” and “product design” linking the tools of knowledge management with knowledge-related tasks of the product development process.

The competitiveness of the German industry is depending on its capability to develop and build innovative and thereby better products than other companies. In the future the lead in technical competence of the employees will be the most differentiating factor from international competitors especially in complex production processes. For assessing the competencies of the employees regarding their significance for a company’s strategy as well as for deriving meaningful indicators competence profiles on the team level have to be developed. Starting from that the required competencies for maintaining and expanding the competitiveness can continuously be pursued in the “Kompetenz Monitor”.

The allocation of available knowledge, the creation of new knowledge as well as the preparation of knowledge as a foundation for a companywide use are main tasks in the area of knowledge management. Even if the euphoria was declining during the last years, knowledge management instruments can contribute decisively to the creation of value in many divisions. In this article it will be shown how a staffing module, which is based on knowledge management, can make an important contribution for the composition of project teams.

Knowledge Management is for many projects a future target whereby the potential of using KM during the project is unfortunately neglected. This starts with the project teams who know nothing about each other and continues with the way in which knowledge management concepts are designed: “in private”. The article describes connections between process optimisation, enterprise culture and knowledge management as well as the “KM²” procedure in the joint project WISMA, where the acceptance for changes and authentic handling during the project is the focal point right from the beginning.

This market survey gives an overview on software for the support of knowledge management. The survey overlooks the span from specialized search engines to integrated knowledge management systems with a broad range of functions. The investigated software supports community-oriented approaches as well as information retrieval. Usage possibilities are as different as the heterogenous requirements of enterprises and organizations for knowledge management. Therefore a direct comparison between the investigated tools is not useful.

To an increasing degree process stability and documentation gain in importance on manual workstations because of the demand to lot size 1 and the duty of flexibility. To ensure efficiency increase regarding to harder quality guidelines, the flow of information to the worker and back have to be optimised and realised resistant against failures and information loss. The use of multi-medial, IT-based worker information systems to assist workers conducting their tasks and to enable a backflow of relevant information like quality data, waste quantities etc. with current technical methods offers a possible solution.

Turbulent business environments force enterprises to ever faster answers and adaptions in order to secure their competitive ability. Mutability and responseability as crucial success factors are based finally on knowledge, which must be continuously improved and renewed. The article shows starting points and how ontology based knowledge management can be used purposefully for the increase of the mutability in and by enterprises and in particular in the assembly.

Although medium sized enterprises ascribe high importance to knowledge management and its impact on company’s success, they have rarely undertaken steps to introduce respective methods. Only a small share of companies applies selected methods, usually rather sporadic and without connection to corporate strategy or other management techniques. The reason lies in the lack of a tool for choosing the most suitable methods. Out of the multitude of instruments available for knowledge management, it is difficult to decide about a method mix fitting best to respective business processes, initial situation and specific demands of the company. This paper presents a concept to manage these shortcomings.

Organizational Learning offers a good possibility for enterprises to compete with the dynamics of the market. Under certain conditions, process integrated education not only leads to process optimization in firms, but also to the beginning of organizational learning. This is of great importance particularly to small and medium sized enterprises, since they normally lack appropriate structures.

The internet-based teaching, learning and communication system “Business Administration Knowledge Laboratory” (WiLabBW) is developed and continuously expanded within a cooperation project of Thuringian universities. The paper gives a survey of the basic goals and explains its architecture and business model.