KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT

Knowledge Management

Knowledge Management

Q1 You should consider here what the organisational problems are at EDU. How might KM help address these? What other benefits and opportunities might KM create? You may derive these from the academic literature, but when discussing the potential benefits of KM make sure you contextualise them to EDU.

Ans. The EDU Integrated Supply Chain (ISC) has experienced, through 2003/2004, significant change. Changes, which have been driven by market forces, have impacted every aspect relating to how EDU as a corporation manages its supply chains. EDU is not unique; supply chain considerations impact upon a great many organisations as they attempt to find integrated solutions to complex problems

As indicated earlier, this paper deals with the initial phases of research associated with a far wider project being undertaken by the principle author as part of an ongoing EDU initiative supported and supervised by external researchers. In order to understand how information and knowledge are created and shared along processes within a complex organization the principal author looked to his own personal experience within EDU's ISC organization. As the E2E order flow process is complex and time critical, problem resolution tended to focus on fixing symptoms rather than addressing the core causes. Resolution was largely taking place at a business unit/functional level, which meant solutions were not being prioritised from an overall E2E impact perspective. This intuitive response was to manage problem resolution of performance pressures from a Functional alignment perspective as opposed to that of Process alignment. As the organization did not yet fully understand the E2E processes involved, the Functional approach was, at the time, the only available tool.

In order to link the work items to specific supply chain activities, as opposed to business units, the PIIs were initially categorised by the management team under the following headings:

Systems effects. Issues relating to system interactions and delivery dates. Delivery dates were unstable causing customers to lose belief in EDU's ability to forecast accurately. Forrester (1961) were suspected but could not be proved.

Supply availability. Issues relating to supply availability and more specifically manufacturing's ability to commit to a build date.

Options/tied orders. Issues relating to delays in shipping due to mis-matching of customer orders for hardware options to the computers being built.

Management systems. Issues relating to identifying and managing failures within the management systems to enable E2E supply chain performance management.

Priority customers and business partners. Issues relating to ensuring priority service to the top ten customers and business partners.

The issues identified were allocated to a senior manager (Function Head) to ensure they were resolved in a timely manner. A review meeting was held twice weekly to ensure progress was being made and focus maintained. In order for the optimisation team's efforts to be effective they would need to be integrated into the overall ISC management system, and have the support of the senior management team. As part of this process the researcher identified three key meetings that would need to happen to ensure the optimisation team's ...