Siemenss knowledge management strategy - Essay Example

?Siemens’s Knowledge Management Strategy Introduction In order to achieve success in its mission, any government’s agency needs a strategic initiative, which can be described as knowledge management. The ability of the government to protect and make effective use of the intellectual capital of the workforce declines with an increase of the retirement rate among the federal workforce. The agency loses its timely decision making ability with the lack of critical knowledge. Where there is lack of knowledge management, agencies are neither able to execute their projects in a timely manner nor they able to complete the project within the estimated cost. Having assessed this dilemma, a representative of the Aberdeen Group said, “Knowledge workers today are losing productivity in an endless search for information they know resides in the organization but is not easily accessible” (Siemens PLM Software, n.d., p. 11). One way for an agency to spread the critical knowledge of program to a wide range of stakeholders is by implementing an effective knowledge framework along with an enterprise-wide strategy of knowledge management. Teams benefit from this flexibility by gaining a way to comprehend the effects as well as interdependencies of the constantly changing environments along the project’s life. The data an agency has at a certain point in time is nothing more than mere representation of the temporal circumstances. There needs to be an appropriate knowledge management strategy in place to understand the relation of the data with different variables and to use it in the decision making process. “Organizations are being advised that to remain competitive, they must efficiently and effectively create, locate, capture, and share their organization’s knowledge and expertise, and have the ability to bring that knowledge to bear on problems and opportunities” (Zack, 1999). The knowledge management strategy enables the workers to use the knowledge in the decision making process as they are able to completely understand different aspects of the knowledge. This paper looks into the knowledge management strategies implemented by the Siemens Company. Literature Review The Frid’s Knowledge Management Model Various strategies and models have been conventionally proposed for knowledge management. One of such models is the Frid’s Knowledge Management Model. The Frid’s Knowledge Management Model divides the assessment levels of knowledge management maturity into five levels. These five levels are “knowledge chaotic, knowledge aware, knowledge focused, knowledge managed, and knowledge centric” (Haslinda and Sarinah, 2009, p. 195). The first level proposes that organizations tend to comprehend and implement the Frid framework of knowledge management by working upon the vision, objectives, and indices of knowledge management. In order to optimize on their potential of knowledge management, organizations tend to advocate and adapt the departmental vision of knowledge management. The second level of knowledge awareness considers organizations to be at a higher step than the ones at knowledge chaotic. At this point, organizations need to focus on the development on a road map of knowledge management and a collaborative working with the office of knowledge management. The third level requires organizations to cover the aspects of implantation just like in the lower two levels. At this level, organizations need to integrate the knowledge management into the process engineering, develop initial infrastructure of service, training and knowledge management, and make the budgets inclusive of knowledge management. “[T]he fourth level termed as knowledge managed adopt the fundamental activities suggested in level one, two and three other than organizations should attempt to embed knowledge management in performance reviews and also in business plans apart” (Haslinda and Sarinah, 2009, p. 193). Knowledge centric is the highest level of the implementation maturity of knowledge management. Effective management of knowledge requires at this level equal emphasis on all activities of knowledge management. Siemens’s Knowledge Management Strategy In the times of economic stress, there are limited financial investments from the external sources. These are the times when an organization can make best use of the existing resources. The existing employees with adequate knowledge make a priceless asset for the organization. This theory particularly applies upon Siemens in which 60 per cent to 80 per cent of the value added is related to knowledge. In the contemporary age, knowledge management has become totally indispensible for Siemens. Knowledge management has added hundreds of thousands of euros to the accounts of Siemens. This has been possible both as a result of acquiring new customer contracts and savings in the existing resources of the company. A potential example of this is the Project Management@Siemens that enables Siemens to make use of knowledge sharing as a technique to create common standards and innovative technology for up to 10,000 project managers that are serving in different branches of Siemens across the globe. “The economic value of knowledge does not lie in possessing it, but in using it. Pilot projects for KM must have clearly defined, measurable objectives that can be achieved in less than six months. However, the changeover to a knowledge-based company involves a change process that can span several years” (Davenport and Probst, 2002). Most of the knowledge management activities at Siemens are conducted in the Siemens VDO and the SBS, MED, ICN, SFS, and ICM Groups. Siemens has above 1500 Communities of Practice (CoP) that comprise of almost 90,000 workers. There are about 250 of the CoPs operate both along the regional boundaries and within their respective groups. 20 per cent of the workers employed by Siemens all over the world are in CoPs. The number of knowledge objects offered by these marketplaces exceeds 250,000. These knowledge objects include but are not limited to structured documents and forums of discussion upon experiences, techniques and solutions. Every month, at least 33.33 per cent of the knowledge objects are downloaded in the marketplaces. This speaks of the activeness of the community. More than 66.66 per cent of the members of the CoP that post questions get back the responses within two days from the time the question was asked. Presently, more than 50 part-time or full-time workers at Siemens assume the responsibility of knowledge management. In addition to this, there are 30 consultants of knowledge management consultants and 1000 workers that promote the processes relate to knowledge management. Knowledge management is not just used internally at Siemens, but it has also become an essential component of the consulting activities of the Siemens’s Business Services. This has conventionally had a very positive impact on the customers of Siemens and has done a lot in expanding the consumer base of Siemens. “The time is right for KM, and customers are ready for it too … In view of growing cost pressure, KM offers solutions that can speed up bureaucratic processes” (Hofer-Alfeis cited in Saphorster, 2012). Siemens’s Success in Knowledge Management With the development and implementation of an effective knowledge management system, Siemens has been able to become a leader in the field of knowledge management among all big corporations in the Europe. There was a time when this statement was used for Siemens, “If Siemens only knew what Siemens knows” (The Economist, 2001). However, this statement has now become obsolete. Teleos is a self-governing knowledge management research company which assigns the prestigious title of “Most Admired Knowledge Enterprise (MAKE)” (Muller, 2012) to one European company every year provided that the company displays exceptional knowledge management programs. After a long time of continuous struggle, Siemens was recognized as the “Most Admired Knowledge Enterprise (MAKE)” (Muller, 2012) in the year 2003. Companies that were awarded this title before Siemens include but are not limited to Nokia and British Petroleum (BP). “An important step to increase Siemens' innovation power and capability is to extend the R&D network across all departmental boundaries and to include external partners into our innovation value chain. Therefore at Siemens, the days of closed doors in the labs are over. Winning the MAKE Award is a great success and proves that Siemens is among the top performers in knowledge creation and management worldwide” (Requardt cited in Siemens, 2010). Commentary Introduction of the knowledge management as a comprehensive process allows its functioning across different organizations as well as the change of the conventional structures. To achieve this, it is imperative that the people responsible for this have due support and assistance of the management. The success of knowledge management strategy in any organization fundamentally depends upon the level to which the senior management who assumes the decision making power accepts its responsibilities. Employees working for the knowledge management at the grass-root level need assurance of appreciation and encouragement by the senior management. The importance of this matter is further enhanced in cases where workers consider knowledge management as a source of threat to their employment. In reality, the exact opposite of this is true. As the workers get to know more, they experience exploration of new areas of business that in turn create more job opportunities. It is the management’s responsibility to spread this awareness among the workers and eradicate their fears that they have with respect to the knowledge management. This has immense application particularly in the contemporary age, when the world has recently been through the economic crisis. Conclusion Business executives have been compelled by the ever-increasing significance of knowledge as a resource for business to evaluate their business knowledge. This has generated a whole range of knowledge management initiatives. Use of IT is on an increase for increased sharing and spread of knowledge given the ease with which knowledge can be acquired and disseminated nowadays. The intricacy of knowledge management initiatives as well as the diversity of IT solutions has caused the executives to confront the challenge of choosing a particular kind of IT solution to effectively implement their knowledge management initiatives. Siemens has conventionally placed emphasis upon the development and maintenance of a culture of sharing, and consumer focus particularly in the technologically advanced countries in which the needs of customers are ever increasing. Knowledge management is more than simple technology. The process of knowledge management at Siemens commenced in a bottom-up fashion with the help of different mid-level initiatives in the practicing communities as well as the bodies of knowledge. People who served as managers of such initiatives personally developed a semi-official practicing community. The creation of community of practice was followed by the development of a corporate knowledge function that provided official support and became a means of coordination among these initiatives in the year 1999 through the establishment of the Corporate KM (CKM) office. The codification approach allows codification and storage of more structured and explicit knowledge in knowledge bases. IT helps people spread the knowledge by means of common storage which promotes the economic reuse of knowledge. With the appropriate use of IT, knowledge management in Siemens has developed to the extent that if some employee of Siemens has a question, normally there is somebody who knows the answer. Recommendations In the present age, organizations work in a knowledge ecology wherein one organization is fed knowledge into by another organization. What makes a difference is a networked approach to knowledge management, which includes both the internal and the external parties. This has a fairly simple logic behind it; cutting off the outflow of knowledge also cuts off the inflow of knowledge. Therefore, it is advisable for Siemens to remain open and welcoming to the external experts and share the ideas across a broad network so that the company can maintain the competitive success it has already achieved in the future. Information is both a component and a significant facilitator of the diverse business at Siemens. The fact that Siemens has been an enthusiastic adopter and implementer of the use of IT is of little surprise as the use of IT greatly enhances the process of knowledge management. Workers involved in the knowledge management process also derive motivation from the IT-driven nature of the business of Siemens. An essential feature of these technologies is that they change quite frequently. In order to keep pace with the changing and advancing communications and computing technologies, it is imperative that a company maintains a system wherein new knowledge is rapidly circulated. References: Davenport, T and Probst, G 2002, Knowledge Management Case Book: Siemens Best Practices, John Wiley/Publicus Corporate Publishing. Haslinda, A, and Sarinah, A 2009, A Review of Knowledge Management Model, The Journal of International Social Research, Vol. 2, No. 9, pp. 187-198. Muller, B 2012, Pictures of the Future Spring 2004, viewed, 28 March 2012, . Saphorster, S 2012, Knowledge Management, viewed, 29 March 2012, . Siemens 2010, Siemens Wins International Award for Knowledge Managemet, viewed, 28 March 2012, . Siemens PLM Software n.d., Enabling innovation through knowledge and intellectual property management, viewed, 28 March 2012, . The Economist 2001, Electronic glue, viewed, 28 March 2012, . Zack, MH 1999, Managing Codified Knowledge, Sloan Management Review, Vol. 40, No. 4, pp. 45-58. Read More