Capturing Competence - Using Wiki for Transferring Tacit Knowledge

Most of a person's knowledge is tacit by nature and is difficult to externalize. In an organization, exploiting tacit knowledge is problematic but when it is done successfully it can increase the knowledge capital of the organization and make the decision-making process more effective. For example, transforming the tacit knowledge of an individual into knowledge that can be shared throughout the organization has a lot of potential. However, organizations often lack the methods of managing tacit knowledge. Transferring tacit knowledge requires a shared context and interaction. Could an information system act as a shared environment? The context of the paper is industrial maintenance. For supporting the integrated operation and maintenance there is a wide variety of different, more and less extensive information systems. Their main purpose is to capture the information needed in the integrated operation and maintenance and store it in one information system. Integrated operation and maintenance can be seen as a very knowledge-intensive process based on problem-solving. Therefore, sharing knowledge is essential and would improve the process. Information systems contain a lot of explicit knowledge which a person needs to absorb in order to turn it into action. However, tools for transferring tacit knowledge are missing even though the maintenance staff accumulates it constantly while working. In the paper we search for a solution to the problem of transferring tacit knowledge in integrated operation and maintenance using a wiki. Wikis have recently become a popular and handy way to create and edit knowledge and information using the Internet. One of the most well-known wikis is Wikipedia, which is surely familiar to all Internet users. The offspring of the paper is a general method with which tacit knowledge in integrated operation and maintenance can be transferred and shared within an organization using a wiki. The paper describes generally the functionalities and utilization of the system and the human-system-human interaction. The transfer of tacit knowledge is studied especially from the viewpoint of the smoothness and continuity of the operation. The method can be utilized extensively in the stages of different processes, for instance, for finding better solutions to fault situations and process development.