• Novice
  • Aware
  • Competent

Corporate Knowledge Management

Knowledge management involves the active collection, storage and use of data on the organization's assets.

The way in which asset data is managed is of critical importance to asset management initiatives, and can shape the effectiveness of the outputs.

Significant portions of asset management knowledge are lost to an organization each time a staff member leaves.

It is imperative that this information be recovered, recorded and stored in a system that makes it available to existing and future staff.

In the past, staff were responsible for only one or two asset facilities, and had worked for the one organization for many years. The staff member could often easily recall information on:

  • Physical attributes of the various assets
  • Their locations
  • Their approximate conditions
  • Access to the asset
  • Asset function.

This information can be recovered by contracting retired staff to provide data for computerized maintenance management systems, asset registers, fault histories and operations manuals.

Combining this historical knowledge with computerized information systems that can accurately categorize and store large quantities of current data will significantly enhance an organization's confidence in its asset management decision-making.

When new assets are handed over, the organisation must ensure that all necessary information requirements are met, and that the information is available to enable staff to effectively manage them from when they are first commissioned. An organization's Asset Hand Over policy should determine these requirements.

Corporate knowledge management tools come in a variety of forms, with varying levels of sophistication and detail. They include:

  • Corporate policy and procedure
  • Operations manuals
  • Maintenance procedures
  • Historical records and reports.

When an organization commissions a project to organize its corporate knowledge, thought must be given to:

  • Who needs to use the data
  • What level of detail needs to be recorded and maintained, and what confidence level is required
  • What (if any) processing of the data is required for it to become 'useful information'.

These factors are independent of the form that the data will be kept in, however most organizations are favoring computerized systems.

Detailed information can be found in the Information Systems Guideline.


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