A Small-Scale Knowledge Management System for a Service-Oriented Department

This paper demonstrates an effort of a serviceoriented engineering department in improving the sharing and transfer of knowledge. Although the department consist of only six employees, but it provides services in various chemical application in an oil and gas business. The services provided span across Asia Pacific region mainly Indonesia, Myanmar, Vietnam, Brunei, Thailand and Singapore. Currently there are no effective tools or integrated systems that support the sharing or transfer and maintenance of knowledge so the department has considered preserving this valuable knowledge by developing a Knowledge Management System (KMS). This paper presents the development of a KMS to support the sharing of knowledge in a service-oriented engineering department of an oil and gas company. The embedded features in the KMS like blog and forum will encourage iterative process of knowledge sharing among the employees in the department. The information and knowledge being shared, discussed and communicated will be then achieved for future re-use. The re-use of the knowledge allows the department to reduce redundant efforts in providing consistent, up-to-date and cost effective of the best solution to the its clients.

Authors:

• Eliza Mazmee Mazlan
• K.S. Savita
• Amir Hamzah Zalfakhar

Keywords:

• Knowledge management
• knowledge managementsystem
• knowledge barrier
• knowledge sharing.

References:

[1] I. Becerra-Fernandez, A. Gonzalez and R. Sabherwal, Knowledge
Management Challenges, Solutions, and Technologies, New Jersey:
Pearson Prentice Hall, 2004
[2] S. Barnes, Knowledge Management Systems: Theory and Practice,
London: Thomson Learning, 2002
[3] T. H. Davenport and G. J. B. Probst, Knowledge Management Case
Book, Germany: John Wiley & Sons, 2002
[4] G. Natarajan, S. Shekhar, Knowledge Management: Enabling Business
Growth, Singapore: McGraw-Hill, 2001
[5] M. Alavi and D. Leidner, "Knowledge Management Systems: Issues,
Challenges, and Benefits," Journal of Communications of the
Association for Information Systems, 1(2), 1999
[6] J. Hahn and M. R. Subrami. "A Framework of Knowledge Management
Systems: Issues and Challenges for Theory and Practice," Proceedings
of the twenty first international conference on Information systems, 302-
312, 2000
[7] C. Lin, B. Tan and S. Chang. "An exploratory model of knowledge flow
barriers within healthcare organizations," Journal of Information and
Management, 45, 331-339, 2008
[8] F. Horible. Managing knowledge workers. Ontario, Canada: John Wiley
& Sons, 1999
[9] G. D. Bhatt., "Knowledge management in organizations: examining the
interactions between technologies, techniques, and people," Journal of
Knowledge Management, 5(1), 68-75, 2001