Know-CoM 201Copyright © 2005, Idea Group Inc. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written- Insufficient knowledge about customer production facilities: Gathering of cus-
tomer information is supported by prestructured protocols for customer corre-
spondences with mandatory fields. The information collected in customer commu-
nication is documented and forwarded by work flows along the core process. Thus,
the information is available in all steps. In order to avoid misunderstandings and
to identify problems concerning the mold or die, application sharing and instant
collaboration (e.g., Lotus Sametime. See section, “Know-CoM Software Proto-
type”) between the customer and manufacturer can take place. - Need of collaboration environment: The joint multidimensional knowledge struc-
ture provides a shared context and builds the basis for a collaborative environment.
Concerning the technical infrastructure, tools for application sharing and instant
collaboration provide additional context and support cooperation between DMCs.
Moreover, the use of protected workspaces improves flexibility, because access
rights can be assigned and revoked depending on the requirements of the
companies. - Management of intellectual property: The management of intellectual property and
particularly its security is the basic requirement for the cooperation in a competitive
environment. The trisection of the individual company servers in public, protected,
and private knowledge spaces provides such a secure environment and flexibly
adaptable access rights foster the controlled knowledge exchange. - Distributed incompatible sources of data: The distributed sources of data such as
standard parts, cutting data, machine characteristics, and so forth, are stored on
the cooperative shared-knowledge server or on the public knowledge spaces of the
DMCs. Thus, search time can be shortened. The shared knowledge structure also
provides context for linking previously incompatible sources of data.
Figure 5 visualizes the elements of the Know-CoM solution. Every company
participating in Know-CoM has its own company server, which is trisected into public,
protected, and private knowledge spaces. Next to the trisected company servers, a
cooperative shared-knowledge server supports cooperation between DMCs by provid-
ing community home spaces and tools for expertise retrieval. Both the company and the
cooperative server work on the basis of the joint multidimensional knowledge structure,
which provides a shared context to the participating enterprises and eases knowledge
exchange between the companies. The internal core processes of the SMEs are supported
in two ways. On the one hand, experiences are captured during the execution of the
process steps and on the other hand, the management of good or best practices is
supported by the technique KM certified that is symbolized in Figure 5 with the KMC
icons. The management of experiences aims at a low documentation effort as well as at
high reusability and is therefore supported by an intelligent metadata management. The
latter helps employees to classify knowledge elements according to the dimensions of
the knowledge structure. Next to capturing of experiences, particularly their approval and
the systematic anchoring in the core process are important in order to ensure that
valuable experiences, good or best practices are applied in processes and thus improve-
ments concerning costs, time, and quality are realized. The management of good or best
practices is realized by the technique KM certified.
After summarizing the elements of the Know-CoM solution, the following section
describes the software prototype.