206 Bayer, Enparantza, Maier, Obermair, and Schmiedinger
Copyright © 2005, Idea Group Inc. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written
CURRENT CHALLENGES
This case presents an organizational and a technical KM solution that specifically
targets die- and mold-making SMEs. Know-CoM particularly considers capturing,
sharing, and reuse of experiences both within the knowledge-intensive business process
of a die and mold maker and across the organizational boundaries with customers and
cooperating DMCs.
In the following section, some preliminary results concerning the application of
Know-CoM by the industrial partners are reflected. We concentrate on the management
of protocols and experiences, which have been the first focus of the application of Know-
CoM. First, those process steps were analyzed where an immediate benefit could be
identified as highly feasible. These are the processes not governed by an ERP system,
which in this case were the offer creation and the die setting up and testing. The
procedure was to detail subprocesses, assign documents to them if necessary (protocols
and experiences), and extract the references required to define and manage the mentioned
documents. For example, the following subprocesses were identified in offer creation: (1)
offer request reception, (2) information request to the customer, (3) obtain main die
parameters (pitch and bandwidth), (4) obtain costs, (5) decide on the probable delivery
time, and (6) decide on final price.
Protocols used currently include the die characteristics sheet, the offer calculation
sheet, and the formal offer document. These protocols are linked mainly to the first four
tasks. The need for establishing protocols in the remaining two stages is being discussed
at the moment.
Experiences are gathered for any of the mentioned processes. Guidelines or good
practices were elaborated for the process of obtaining main die parameters, a key task
that was not documented and greatly relied on the experience of certain key personnel
in the company. The formalization of this task has allowed a far shorter training period
for newcomers and has lowered the dependency that the company as a whole had on
certain personnel for running this process with a guarantee for the final result. A number
of references were extracted to be used as metadata for the process of searching and
filtering the documents mentioned. Examples in the case of the die characteristics sheet
Table 2. Indicators for success measurement
Criteria Indicator
Time • average number of design-test-redesign cycles and time required- average lead time
- average time required for the execution of the process steps
- average time needed to get complete customer information
- search time
Cost • average production costs/mold
-^ average personnel costs/mold - average material wastage
- average cutting tool wastage
Quality • average number of internal rejects - average number of external rejects
- average lifetime of mold