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Knowledge Management

Whereas OM&S technology provides a fairly direct link between the capability of a technology and factory performance, knowledge management (KM) technology is one step removed from such a direct link. Indeed, KM is a logical counterpart of physical asset management, the leveraging of our physical capital (land, factories, computers, equipment, etc.) to improve profitability. KM leverages "knowledge capital" (patents, trademarks, know-how, competencies, skills, tacit or unwritten knowledge, relationships, etc.). Since, at the present time, the value of these intellectual assets is not really understood, the first goal of KM is to define a set of metrics that allows one to know even if there is any leverage to intellectual capital.

One rough estimate may be made by comparing the value of a company in the eyes of its stockholders to the paper value of the company's physical assets. In the case of Intel, the stock value (shares outstanding times price) is about $120 Billion, while the physical assets have a value of about $25 Billion. The difference, about $95 Billion, or four times the physical asset value, may be ascribed to non-physical assets!

KM capabilities may be defined using the following model. KM is divided into four large domains: the creation of knowledge, the capture and structure of knowledge, the dissemination of knowledge, and the application of knowledge. Some attributes of each of these four categories are shown below in Table 5.

The two areas that require most attention are items 2 and 3 in Table 5: the collection, structuring, and indexing of knowledge, and the secure, rapid dissemination of knowledge to potential users. Of primary interest are metrics: understanding how to value the intellectual assets of the enterprise, and indexing: the categorization of knowledge for rapid and ubiquitous application. Also of great significance is the knowledge tool environment. Much like the information tools of prior generations, knowledge tools are rapidly emerging and evolving. We expect that a knowledge tool environment similar in concept to the Windows* information environment will emerge, thereby allowing us to exchange knowledge objects in much the same way as we already exchange information objects.

Some potential areas where knowledge management can be applied are as follows:

• Understanding and matching of core competencies of individuals with attributes of job needs.
• Providing a "Knowledge Atlas," a visual environment in which employees can guide themselves to find knowledge items, for example, "how do I do this?"; "who do I see to do that?"; or "who is the expert on this?".
• Developing tools that leverage an employee's job skills, allowing people to take on more responsible jobs using knowledge assistants for help.
• Better problem solving by providing access to vast and comprehensive knowledge bases of past occurrences, tied to the nature of a problem rather than to simple key-word searches.

Knowledge management tools will help make us a more efficient company by providing access to knowledge to people who need it, wherever they are and whatever the problem set. We should then be able to make faster and wiser decisions, resulting in significant improvements in factory and even enterprise performance.

Organizational Issues

Pursuit of information and knowledge technology, as given in the examples above, is not free. In particular, in addition to the obvious need for technical skills, there is a need to understand and respond to the managerial and organizational skills required for success.

At one time, the resources required to operate a factory consisted almost universally of people who had their hands on the product: moving it, processing it, assembling it, storing it. Currently, the trend is towards having a greater percentage of the workforce spending time on the processing of data and information. They gather data, analyze data, and convert these data to information. This information is then stored, transmitted, and disseminated, so that decisions can be made and our knowledge increased. Meanwhile, the total workforce is decreasing through physical and logical productivity improvement.

The result of these two trends is schematically illustrated in Figure 5 below. The total workforce is decreasing, while the percentage of IT and software personnel is increasing.

There are two personnel issues to confront as a result of these trends: the first is the evolution of the factory workforce from process-centric to one that is more information-centric. The processing domain is equipment dominated, where our equipment suppliers own the core competencies. As more and more information processing is incorporated into the factory, more technologists will be necessary in the IT processing field. However, this problem is fairly manageable; Intel is an expert at managing technology.

The real issues are those of organization and management. Managing process is straightforward: align the management organizations functionally, for example, with cross-cutting metrics such as yield, cost, delivery, etc. Managing the information organization is different, however. The cross-cutting disciplines such as platforms, software, and databases are not conducive to factory management, but the information technology does not map well to the traditional metrics of yield, delivery, etc. Furthermore, the skills of management need to be different. Management needs to be more proficient in IT skills; their current skill set is technologically oriented towards processing technology.

These management and organizational issues need to be dealt with concurrent with the growth of IT technology.

^* Other brands and names are the property of their respective owners.


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