Case Studies in Knowledge Management

Supporting Research and Development Processes 173

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Concept presentation:

• Participants: if possible, all employees of TAT


• Responsibility: project manager


• Content: presentation of machine concept, including all defined technological
  details, requirements, and performance facts


• Goal: identification of all employees with new machine and motivation of employ-
  ees by early involvation, intensivation of discussion processes eased by equal
  information level

Subphase I.2 – Execution
This subphase handles the execution of all presentations that are not part of the
target definition workshop. The main idea besides the equal information level and
discussion processes is the identification of employees with “their” machine.

Target Definition Workshop

The preparation of the target definition workshop is done in subphase 1 of Phase
II — preparation (see section on subphase II.1). Content of this workshop is the definition
of so-called “knowledge goals.” These knowledge goals are relevant for cooperation of
the different departments within the development project. The result of the workshop
should be a way to secure the communication, information, and experience exchange and
feedback between employees of these departments. It is NOT the goal of this workshop
to work out technological requirements, because these are defaults already defined by
product idea and concept of the new machine (series).

Figure 4. Concept detail – part 1