Manufacturing Knowledge Management

1
Manufacturing Knowledge Management
Manufacturing Knowledge Warehouse Development

• Sep 2004 - Sep 2010

• Aim Objectives
• The aim of the research is to facilitate
  knowledge management process for grinding
  technology by building a flexible and easy to use
  knowledge based warehouse (KW), which could
  manage both explicit and tacit knowledge.
• The objectives are to design and develop the
  following modules
• Date Interface (DIM)
• Database (DBM)
• Problem Solving (PSM)
• Learning Knowledge Discovery (LKDM)
• Knowledge warehouse (KWM)
• Knowledge Analysis (KAM).
• Methodology
• The Grinding Knowledge Warehouse (GKW) includes
  six modules as shown in Figure 1. DIM collects
  the data through the data collection interface
  and Community of Practices (CoPs) members. DBM
  stores, retrieves, and shares data in various
  formats. These data will then transfer to PSM and
  LKDM, which will provide the user a guidance for
  selecting grinding conditions. KAM facilitates
  knowledge conversion from tacit to explicit
  knowledge by directly acquiring the tacit
  knowledge from knowledge engineers or CoP
  members. Also, KAM provides the interface for CoP
  members and knowledge engineers. The core of PSM
  includes Case Based Reasoning and Rule Based
  Reasoning. LKDM extracts implicit, previously
  unknown and potential useful rules and patterns
  to modify and update existing rules and patterns.
  The GKW will be integrated into a internet based
  framework for a wide accessibility.

Chart 1 Percentage for Group A
Chart 2 Percentages for Group B
Figure 1 Methodology
Results The structure of grinding knowledge has
been analysed and a framework of a grinding
knowledge warehouse is constructed to facilitate
knowledge management. In order to acquire an
overview and awareness of the grinding knowledge
sharing activities in Rolls Royce, several
meetings and discussions were carried out.
Community of practice is used as a sharing
knowledge tool between the employees. Statistical
analysis between two different communities was
conducted to evaluate their performance as shown
in Chart 1 and Chart 2. It has noticed that a
knowledge warehouse should make knowledge more
accessible for users, should retrieve knowledge
more efficiently and quickly, and should
facilitate extracting knowledge from CoP.
Potential Benefits and Future Plans The new KW
will encourage and facilitate the sharing of
explicate and tacit knowledge. The grinding cases
will be kept in the knowledge warehouse that will
support the decision making process for selecting
grinding conditions for new processes and
optimisation. As a result, it will save the time
for CoP members by providing them with most
relative answer to their questions. It also helps
them sharing up-to-date knowledge. Currently,
the database module has been developed using
Access 2000 and Visual Basic. The problem solving
knowledge discovery module includes Case Bases
Reasoning (CBR) and Rule Based Reasoning (RBR).
The further work will integrate all the modules
into a systems which allow users to access the
knowledge warehouse via the internet.
Investigator Asmaa Alabed Supervisor Xun
Chen Industrial collaborator Rolls-Royce plc.