All entries for Tuesday 14 April 2009

initiating kbam pma

I have chosen resource utilisation for my KBAM pma. At first answering the question was rather puzzling because I could not see how resource planning, i.e. inventory levels, capacity planning could relate to the idea of knowledge, i.e. how to facilitate sharing of information etc., that seem to dominate literatures on KM and organisational learning. 

After spending some time reading up about inventory management, and some common problems that goes on in scheduling production, managing customers, and raw material orders, I begin to see it is necessary to view knowledge in a more broader sense: as the ¡§thing¡¨ that is necessary to run a business and this may be key information, the way of organising work etc

So in a way resource utilisation tools (or methods or techniques) such as MRP, MRPII, JIT, DRP are, I suppose, knowledge management tools in its own right, designed to help people interpret and make decision based on raw data such as inventory level, delivery time etc.

If above premise are accepted, then the systems mentioned above seem like the formal KM tools- ie what people can see explicitly and followed religiously. However, there is also another level of knowledge not visible from these formal tools, called informal knowledge, which are often the often tried & tested ¡§methods¡¨ or ¡§ways of doing things around here¡¨ .

Sometimes informal and formal knowledge are incompatible with each other, such as when data generated from computer is completely ignored by workers who would rather rely on talking to people or own experience to make own decisions, thereby rendering the formal system essentially worthless. Interestingly, Landvater 1997 explains this by saying whether formal, informal adopted by organisation, it is the one that provide the necessary information to people that reigns all. The abandonment of computer system is due to the fact it doesn¡¦t give the information people wanted, therefore an informal system appears. 

To apply KM to resource planning then, seem to take the questions of resources to a higher level. Instead of asking ¡§what information do I need to make my ordering decision¡¨, we may be asking ¡§what system will best suited to solve this problem?¡¨, and this question would then depend on ¡§what sort of knowledge does this decision requires?¡¨ 

The point I am trying to make here, I suppose, is that KM is about maximising the benefits of formal/informal systems of information transfer to deliver your organisational objectives. This would depend on the organisational structure, cultures, and type of operations that are carried out. Thinking along this line of thought brings KM literatures closer asset management. 

: 14 Apr 2009 15:18 |  Tags: Kbam Mbe |  Comments (1) |  Close comments |  Report a problem