Over the last couple of years EBoK (Engineering Book of Knowledge) has proven to be a valuable enabler for Communities of Practice. The straightforward quality assurance process, the easy to use tool and the flexibility to adapt EBoK to the individual needs of the different communities were the most obvious success factors of the EBoK process and tool during the first years. In the meantime the deployment of EBoK has become part of the transnational Knowledge Management activities within Airbus. This created new challenges. For the transnational rollout it could no longer be relied on the willingness of a few interested groups to share und re-use knowledge, but it had to be found a way to integrate experience sharing and re-use into the daily work of all Airbus engineers. Both the concept of Knowledge Communities that bridge the gaps between isolated groups, departments or processes, and the new deployment concept furthered acceptance. In order to cope with the changed transnational environment, the EBoK tool was enhanced, too, e.g. by a statistics module and a new search functionality. This process is not finished as there are still some requirements that are not yet met by the EBoK: Tracking of LL re-used in order to guarantee the application of vital lessons learned. More flexible modelling of knowledge structures, e.g. by help of an ontology instead of a simple tree structure. Based on an ontology, the EBoK could easily provide different views of the experience on-hand, e.g. system oriented, program or manufacturing views. Metrics for the benefits gained by re-use of experience instead of statistics that still need a lot of work for interpretation. In order to fulfil these requirements, some developments are already underway - other topics such as ontologies or metrics are still in the research stage. Based on the positive experience there is confidence that both the EBoK and the concept of Knowledge Communities will support Airbus in the future.
The engineering book of knowledge: establishing and developing knowledge communities within the Airbus Company
Das Technikbuch des Wissens: Gründung und Entwicklung von Wissensgemeinschaften im Airbus-Unternehmen
2003
9 Seiten, 5 Bilder, 8 Quellen
Aufsatz (Konferenz)
Englisch
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