Industrial Knowledge Management: A Micro-level Approach

554 Pages·2001·23.366 MB·English

by  Emmanuel Vergison (auth.), Rajkumar Roy PhD (eds.)

Industrial Knowledge Management
Springer-Verlag London Ltd.
Rajkumar Roy (Ed.)
Industrial Knowledge
Management
AM icro-Ievel Approach
With 175 Figures
i
Springer
Rajkumar Roy, PhD
Department ofEnterprise Integration, School ofIndustrial and Manufacturing
Science, Cranfield University, Cranfield, Bedford, MK43 OAL, UK
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Industrial knowledge management: a micro-Ievel approach
1.Knowledge management 2.Knowledge management -Computer
network resources 3.Knowledge management -Data processing
I.Roy, R. (Rajkumar), 1966·
ISBN 978-1-4471-1075-0
I.ibrary of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Industrial knowledge management: a micro-Ievel approach I Rajkumar Roy (ed.).
p.cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4471-1075-0 ISBN 978-1-4471-0351-6 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-4471-0351-6
1. Information resources management. 2. Knowledge management. 1. Roy, R.
(Rajkumar), 1966-
T58.64.1454 2000
658.5·-dc21 00-044029
Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as
permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced.
stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior. permission in writing of the
publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms oflicences issued by
the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries conceming reproduction outside those terms should be sent
to the publishers.
© Springer-Verlag London 2001
Originally published by Springer-Verlag London Limited in 2001
The use of registered names, trademarks etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a
specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant laws and regulations and therefore free
for general use.
The pubJisher makes no representation, express or implied, with regard to the accuracy of the
information contained in this book and cannot accept any legal responsibility or liability for any errors or
omissions that may be made.
Typesetting: Camera ready by contributors
69/3830-543210 Printed on acid-free paper SPIN 10746129
The book is dedicated to the memory of
my beloved grandmother
Late Subhashini Roy
Preface
The book presents state of the art practices and research in the area of Knowledge
Capture and Reuse in industry. This book demonstrates some of the successful
applications of industrial knowledge management at the micro level. The Micro
Knowledge Management (MicroKM) is about capture and reuse of knowledge at
the operational, shopfloor and designer level. The readers will benefit from different
frameworks, concepts and industrial case studies on knowledge capture and reuse.
The book contains a number of invited papers from leading practitioners in the field
and a small number of selected papers from active researchers.
The book starts by providing the foundation for micro knowledge management
through knowledge systematisation, analysing the nature of knowledge and by
evaluating verification and validation technology for knowledge based system
development. A number of frameworks for knowledge capture, reuse and
integration are also provided. Web based framework for knowledge capture and
delivery is becoming increasingly popular. Evolutionary computing is also used to
automate design knowledge capture. The book demonstrates frameworks and
techniques to capture knowledge from people, data and process and reuse the
knowledge using an appropriate tool in the business. Therefore, the book bridges
the gap between the theory and practice. The 'theory to practice' chapter discusses
about virtual communities of practice, Web based approaches, case based reasoning
and ontology driven systems for the knowledge management. Just-in-time
knowledge delivery and support is becoming a very important tool for real-life
applications. The tools chapter also discusses about STEP PC, WebGrid and
datamining. Industrial case study chapter is a key chapter for the book. This chapter
presents examples from a number of companies, and discusses about the challenges
in handling real life problems, methodology used, results obtained and some
pointers for future successful applications. The future of industrial knowledge
management at the micro level is going in the direction of more standardisation in
knowledge capture and reuse, developing specialist knowledge systems, and
working as focused knowledge communities. Finally, the resource guide is a unique
feature of the book. The chapter will help practitioners in getting access to leading
research groups in the area, know about conferences, journals and magazine.
May I also take this opportunity to acknowledge the contribution made by Mr.
Jesse Bailey, Mr. Benjamin Adesola and Mrs. Urbee Roy for the success of the
book.
Rajkumar Roy
Cranfield University, UK
12th May 2000
Foreword
The term Knowledge Management has been defined (by management consultants),
redefined (by computer scientists), and undefined (by marketers of software
products). Rather than rendering the term meaningless, the adoption of the label by
these groups reflects an evolution of the problem and opportunity it represents. The
core idea is that knowledge is a critical asset for the modem enterprise, and
therefore it should be used well ---that is, it should be captured, applied, and reused
effectively. The ambiguity of the term reveals the different perspectives on how
best to harness the value of corporate knowledge. The management consultant
focuses on the capture and reuse of intellectual property, business processes, and
organizational learning. The computer scientist will look for opportunities for
formalizing the knowledge so that software can help apply it to tasks such as design
and manufacturing. The vendors of knowledge management products have found a
substantial market for software that helps knowledge workers collaborate in virtual
teams while drawing from corporate knowledge sources.
This book brings together research that inhabits the blurry boundary between
human knowledge processes (such as design, manufacturing, and employee
learning) and computational support (design support tools, manufacturing
automation, corporate Intranets). How to better capture knowledge? Design
ontologies and representations of product and process, then use methods of
knowledge acquisition to encode domain knowledge. How to better apply it?
Create resources and tools that help people learn from a collective body of what
they know and how they work. How to enable reuse? Integrate corporate
knowledge, as captured and formalized, with the tools and processes of the
workplace. The book invokes a vision of the enterprise in which humans and
computers form a buzzing hive of synergistic activity, linked by a network of
knowledge bases and tools.
Implicit throughout the collection is the assumption that the techniques of
formalizing and operationalizing knowledge, which were developed for knowledge
based systems, can help with this human-computer-organization problem of
knowledge management. Put another way, the assumption implies that the benefits
of formalization --- mainly, the ability to get some software services out of it --- are
useful to the human activities of knowledge workers in the modem enterprise.
Sometimes formalization brings structure and organization to the chaos of
documents, email, and web pages where knowledge work occurs. Sometimes the
systematic mapping-out of design and manufacturing processes leads to better
process design. Sometimes a knowledge management system can help coordinate
the concurrent engineering activities of large virtual teams --- something not
x
possible by collocation or hierarchical management techniques. But sometimes the
well-intended effort to formalize and systematize runs into the messy reality of
human activity: people don't have time to become knowledge engineers, and
knowledge-based systems can't automate much of what we call knowledge work.
The reader of this volume should keep a critical eye on treatment of the integration
of knowledge acquisition and knowledge use. Where there is synergy among the
methods for capturing knowledge and the ways in which it is applied, there is
insight. By bringing together research on both sides of this chasm, and a few gems
that span the waters, this collection offers a fresh perspective on the potential of
technology to support knowledge management in industry.
Tom Gruber
Founder and CTO, Intraspect Software
Silicon Valley, California
24th March, 2000
Table of Contents
Chapter 1: Foundation .................................................................................. 1
Micro-Scale Knowledge Management: a necessary condition for getting corporate
knowledge properly implemented
E. Vergison................................................................................................................. 3
Foundation of Knowledge Systematization: Role of Ontological Engineering
R. Mizoguchi and Y. Kitamura ................................................................................. 17
A Conceptual Model for Capturing and Reusing Knowledge in Business-Oriented
Domains
G. P. Zarri ................................................................................................................. 37
Domain Knowledge in Engineering Design: Nature, Representation, and Use
F. Mili and K. Narayanan ........................................................................................ 55
Selecting and Generating Concept Structures
D. Janetzko ............................................................................................................... 73
Evaluating Verification and Validation Methods in Knowledge Engineering
A. Preece .................................................................................................................. 91
Chapter 2: Frameworks ........................................................................... 105
Design Knowledge Acquisition and Re-Use Using Genetic Engineering-Based
Genetic Algorithms
J. Gero and V. Kazakov .......................................................................................... 107
A Web-Based Framework for Integrating Knowledge
J. T. Fernandez-Breis and R. Mertinez-Bejar ......................................................... 123
Re-Design Knowledge Analysis, Representation and Re-Use
I. Arana, H. Ahriz and P. Fothergill ....................................................................... 139
Project Memory in Design
N. Matta, M. Ribiere, O. Corby, M. Lewkowicz and M. Zacklad ............................ 147
XII
Micro Knowledge Management: A Job Design Framework
M. J. Leseure and N. Brookes ................................................................................ 163
Building the KDD Roadmap: A Methodology for Knowledge Discovery
J.e. W Debuse, B. de la Iglesia, e.M. Howard, and V.J. Rayward-Smith .............. 179
Chapter 3: Theory to Practice ................................................................. 197
Supporting Virtual Communities of Practice
J. Davies .............................................................................................................. ,. . 199
Managing Micro-and Macro-level Design Process Knowledge across Emergent
Internet Information System Families
A. Tiwana ............................................................................................................... 213
The Development of Case-Based Reasoning for Design -Techniques and Issues
S. Potter, S. Culley, M. Darlington and P. Chawdhry ........................................... 233
An Internet-Based Approach to the Capture and Reuse of Knowledge in Design
P. Rogers N.H.M. Caldwell and A.P. Huxor .......................................................... 249
Ontology-Driven Knowledge Management: Philosophical, Modelling and
Organizational Issues
S.B. Shum, J. Domingue and E. Motta ................................................................... 265
Chapter 4: Tools ........................................................................................ 281
Micro-Modelling of Business Processes for Just-in-Time Knowledge Delivery
U. Reimer, B. Novotny and M. Staudt .................................................................... 283
Just-in-Time Knowledge Support
E. Dehli and G.J. Coll ............................................................................................ 299
STEP PC: A Generic Tool for Design Knowledge Capture and Reuse
N. Prat ..................................................................................................................... 317
WebGrid: Knowledge Elicitation and Modelling on the World Wide Web
M. G. Shaw and B. R. Gaines .................................................................................. 335
Mapping for Reuse in Knowledge-Based Systems
1. Y. Park and M.A. Musen ...................................................................................... 349
Mining Very Large Databases to support Knowledge Exploration
N. Mackin ................................................................................................................ 365