A NEW KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT TOOL TO FACILITATE PROCESS INNOVATION IN MANUFACTURING COMPANIES

This paper presents a novel KM tool to allow companies to obtain sufficient knowledge about its process in order to enhance its competitiveness and to innovate. To date there is no practical multidisciplinary model that enables companies to switch from engineering chaos to a structured, robust process. This new approach creates a reliable framework which promotes innovation and it offers a sustainable model for knowledge creation in that the knowledge generated through its use can be continuously build upon to expand the body of internal knowledge within the company. The model is based on existing engineering tools and exploiting the knowledge generated through their use using the interchange between tacit and explicit knowledge thus it is presented in the context of Nonka's knowledge spiral. The model has been used successfully in a number of case studies one which is presented in this paper.