Technology and Knowledge Management - Assignment Example

Knowledge management; project 4 al affiliation) Knowledge management: The Franklin institute of science Nature of the organization Franklin museum is an organization that is dedicated to times, life and legacy of famous founding father of Philadelphia. The Benjamin Franklin Museum is a world class museum features computer animation, personal artifacts and interactive displays that explore Franklin life as a state’s man and a private citizen. All ages displays and exhibits offer visitors fun and education to learn about the eighteenth century and Benjamin Franklin. The organization has different goals and various departments that work together. Visitors are able to learn of the different roles Franklin filled during his time that entails a scientist, a diplomat, a printer, and founder of the civic institution. Individual rooms inside the museum reflect different aspects of Franklin character and personality trait as he was known to be curious, rebellious and strategic. Franklin institute is one of the oldest centres of development and science in the United States of America. The paper will focus on curatorial department at the Franklin museum institute. The institution has various departmental goals with each department led by a departmental head. The department is concerned with activities that are mainly focused on presentation and development of cultural artifacts according to coherent and clearly defined organizational principles and themes (Amine Chatti, 2012). The department is made up of nearly twenty employees and ten interns. Robert Johnson is the head of curatorial department and has worked in the department for over twenty years. He has been able to witness the various challenges and strengths faced by the department at those various periods. The department has continued to impart knowledge toward the many interns who frequent the place every academic year. The departmental employees utilize live demonstration, hand-on exhibitions, for professional and educational development. In addition, the department partners with other departments with an aim of achieving its goals. The curatorial department is made up of twenty staffs that are answerable to the departmental chair. The curatorial coordinator is in charge of coordinating internship programs (Mansell, 2002). Intern students are often trained on various aspects that include physical numbering and tagging, collection inventory, performing data base entry as well as updating and modifying catalogue records. Interns are often trained on the utilization of past perfect program which is a widely utilized software package for middle and small sized collections. The imaging of historical documents and artifacts by digital photography and scanning as well as environmental data on objects on exhibit and storage are also part of the task that the interns are often trained to do. There is a constant drive in the department to not only be concerned about the current programs in place but also to innovate new approaches that will add to the already existing program. Employee turnover is one of the challenges that are experienced in the department and the organization at large. The employees who leave the department as a result of promotion to other leadership position within the organization or in search of employment elsewhere are often experienced yet their replacement are often less experienced and new to the department. The approach often results to poor passing of information since the less employed individuals are unaware of where to begin (Mansell, 2002). In addition the department is currently relying on experienced workers to pass information to the less experienced and interns. Poor network system has made it difficult for the new recruits to begin from where those who came before them left. The move serves as an organization failure and calls for the department and the organization to come up with effective methods and system that will allow effective transition from one employee to the other. The challenges faced by the organization calls for the replacement of experienced knowledge worker or human expertise with knowledge based system. Knowledge management Knowledge management is the process of developing, capturing, sharing and utilizing the organizational knowledge in an effective manner. The process aims at enabling the organization and the department to achieve the goals and the objectives by making effective use of knowledge. The process will focus on the objectives of the company, hoe it competes, how it performs, how lesson learned are shared among the members of the organizations to ensure that improvement is encouraged. Knowledge tends to link various sections of the company such as organizational culture, organizational processes, management, technology, corporate politics and knowledge management strategy (Liu, 2012). Knowledge management is important in getting the right knowledge to the person who needs it at the right time. By doing so the organization is able to achieve the goals set at the right time. This in itself may not seem hard, but implies a strong tie to organizational strategy, understanding how knowledge exists, spanning organizational functions as well as creating processes, and by ensuring that the initiatives are supported and accepted by the members of the organization. Knowledge management will include creation of new knew knowledge, storage, refinement and sharing. For the department to be able to deal with the challenges that are faced plan should be underway to ensure that human expertise is replaced by knowledge based systems. Knowledge based system is a software that utilizes expert system technique and artificial intelligence in solving various departmental challenges. It incorporates a data base of expert knowledge, with linkages and couplings designed to facilitate its retrieval in response to specific questions or transfer the expertise one knowledge domain to the other. A knowledge based system is a system that utilizes artificial intelligence techniques in processes that are aimed at solving problems with an intention of supporting learning, human decision making and action. There are various approaches to knowledge acquisition. The push strategy for example entails individuals struggling to code their knowledge into databases or retrieve the knowledge that is already available in the repository. It is offered known as the codification approach to the management of knowledge (Mansell, 2002). The department has however targeted human expertise rather than putting effective measures in place to support the approach. Knowledge based reasoning and representation is a field of artificial intelligence which represent information about the world in a computer system form and which can be utilized to solve some complex tasks such as having a dialog in a natural language or diagnosing a medical condition (Mansell, 2002). Knowledge representation tends to incorporate psychological findings about how human beings are able to solve problems and the various challenges that do exist. The approach often leads to construction of systems that are easier to build and design. Example of such knowledge representation formalism includes frame, semantic nets, ontologies, rules and frames. Automated reasoning systems include classifiers, theorem provers and inference engine. A rule based knowledge system has global facts and rules about the knowledge domain that has been covered. Local knowledge database may also be established at such a period. Advantage and disadvantage of rule based system Rule based reasoning will have both advantages and disadvantage after it is implemented in the department to replace the human expertise. Some of the advantage of the approach includes modularity. Modularity can be explained by observing each rule as a unit of knowledge. Another advantage is uniformity. Uniformity entails expressing all the knowledge in the same format which facilitates the creation of base de conocimiento. The other advantage of the system is naturalness that utilizes rules as natural format that explains dominion knowledge. Rule based reasoning is also associated with many limitations which include infinite chaining. The system has to be specially crafted to prevent infinite loops. The second disadvantage of the system is possibility of contradictions (Mansell, 2002). The modification of the knowledge based system can end up being complicated. Sometimes when a new knowledge is introduced into the system to help solve specific challenges, contradictions with the previous rules may be introduced. On the same note, changing some rules that are inexistence might require the expert to reconsider its impact to the rules that depends on the system. Other limitations includes opacity which means that it may be difficult to assess a rule based system with an intention of determining the actions that are going to take place and when they will be able to occur. Inefficiency as a limitation entails computational costs being high because rules require pattern matching. Finally, the last disadvantage of rule based reasoning is complex domain. Some domains are often considered too complex that hundreds of rules will be required to represent the high number of possible situations for example Floght Control (Liu, 2012). The knowledge based and the inference engine re divided because the mechanism of reasoning has to be as stable as possible. The arrangement enables the system to be converted or built into a shell. Moreover, the knowledge based should be able to develop and change as a result of addition of knowledge. It is of essence to develop a more elaborate and rich description of the expert system. The system should be able to hold a collection of principles that are general and can applied to any situation (Liu, 2012). The system also involves holding a collection of numerous details that may be applied to the current problem. Both sought of information are developed by the inference engine. It is reasonable to include a knowledge base and an expert interface, since a practical expert system will require a mechanism that can modify the knowledge base more efficiently. Individuals can represent the experience that someone utilizes as rules. The idea is however very old. A rule based system therefore identifies a pattern and takes appropriate measures, advices what should be done, or identifies the pattern and come up with effective conclusion of what it means. Conclusion Knowledge just like any other word adapted from computer science has a different meaning that has been redefined and defined in various times to meet the needs of the various changes in computer science. The department requires new knowledge as eelier explained through research as well as collaborating and engaging with other professionals. It is also taken through experiments. Through networking and sharing, tacit knowledge can be exchanged and made explicit by writing it down and then distributing it. It is often compared with the systemic knowledge and integrated into skills that can be vital in the organization (Mansell, 2002). I recommend that the department should widen their utilization capacity towards networks; this will enlarge the workers as a result of encouraging workers to perform from different locations that are considered vital. The utilization of the knowledge based system will enhance better transformation from the experienced workers to those that are not yet experienced. Conclusion Amine Chatti, M. (2012). Knowledge management: a personal knowledge network perspective. Journal Of Knowledge Management, 16(5), 829-844. doi:10.1108/13673271211262835 Mansell, R. (2002). Constructing the knowledge base for knowledge‐driven development. Journal Of Knowledge Management, 6(4), 317-329. doi:10.1108/1367327021044083 Liu, W. (2012). A Rule-Based Expert System for Industrial Training. Technology And Investment, 03(02), 126-128. doi:10.4236/ti.2012.32016 Read More