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there are some barriers, that prevent documentation of experiences or reuse of already-
documented experiences. The required time is a critical factor, because employees have
to document in addition to other organizational duties. Therefore, the organization has
to provide time tolerances to their employees. However, it must be considered that the
effort concerning documentation has to be as low as possible, but simultaneously,
sufficient context of the experience has to be provided. The detection of context is
important, because reusability of documented experiences depends much on the context.
Next to these organizational barriers, personal barriers hinder distribution or application
of codified experiences. Typical personal barriers are for example insufficient willingness
to share knowledge or to apply knowledge that was created by other employees (not-
invented-here syndrome). Regarding the cooperation in a competitive environment,
particularly the latter seems to be a serious barrier, which has to be considered by
accompanying measures, such as change management, trust management, and incentive
systems.
Several approaches exist for capturing experiences such as micro-articles, learning
histories, RECALL, after action review, and postproject appraisal (for details, see
Schindler & Eppler, 2003; Disterer, 2002; Willke, 2001; Sary & Mackey, 1996). In Know-
CoM, experiences should be captured as small articles supported by templates that are
structured according to topic, story, insight, and conclusion of the micro-article
(according to Willke, 2001). Topic considers the context provided by the knowledge
structure. Story describes the experience or learning context. Insight stands for the
learning reason (e.g., the cause of the problem). Conclusion comprises the solution (e.g.,
a procedure) of the problem or a specific situation based on the insight. Experiences that
are structured in this way might have a high reusability and traceability due to the
provided context. In order to ease codifying experiences, the employees have to answer
questions supported by wizards according to the context (story) and document their
insights and solutions.
During the whole development process of dies and mold, characteristics of the
multidimensional structure are collected. For every order, the collected information is
forwarded and extended along the steps of the development process. Metadata are added
step-by-step either automatically or semi-automatically by the application of predefined
checkboxes that comprise the elements of the joint multidimensional knowledge struc-
ture. Intelligent metadata management means that based on the knowledge structure,
specifications of the dimensions are suggested to the user for approval. Particularly, the
automated suggestion and filling of predefined checkboxes with check marks minimizes
the employees’ documentation effort. This means that, for example, during work on an
incoming order, metadata are added according to part, part’s material, customer, customer’s
machine, and so forth. Metadata already collected are extended in the following steps of
the core process (e.g., design, production, and test).
Additionally, employees can document experiences in every process step. After
completion of the process step or of one task, wizards ask the employee whether there
were specifics or problems he/she solved. The following example should explain the
procedure of the capturing of experiences in detail:
A toolmaker uses in the process step production not the cutting tool suggested by
the production planner and changes the tool supplier, because he knows that tool
wastage is above average due to the material’s hardness and machine characteristics.