Knowledge Management at Ford Motors

GROUP NO.-3

NEHA (215112093)

ANU (215112028)

EDWIN (215112056)

AMITESH (215112094)

Agenda

Ford Profile, Comments

History

Ford Motors and KM Activities

Principles and Process of BPR

Results

Strategies

Conclusion

Ranked #4 by Fortune 500

2012 Revenues -- US$134.3 billion

2001 Global Unit Vehicle Sales – 7 million

354,000 Employees

Ford Profile

Overview Comments

Ford has many Knowledge Sharing Processes: Enterprise Portals, Document Repository, GIS, e-Books, Best Practice Replication(BPR)…

Write, Search, and Read access to BPR is limited to Ford Employees, with valid ID and who have received proper training.

Detailed BPR Process is considered confidential information.

Achieved Vision

Robust business process for the collection and approval of high value practices that can be shared and implemented throughout the enterprise.

Establish Collaborative Capabilities and build people relationships by sharing valuable knowledge.

Technology to enable nimble and intuitive communication of knowledge.

History

Jun ’95: Informal process of faxing practices amongst vehicle operations.

Jun ’96: Launched BPR across vehicle operations – 53 plants globally.

Feb ’00: Derivative of process for Health and Safety for communicating concerns and incidents. Developed and Launched BPR version 2.0

Dec ’00: Derivative of the process for Environmental application.

History (Contd.)

Feb ’01: Adapted process for replicating key findings of 6-Sigma projects.

Aug ’96 – Present: Launched 53 Communities of Practice: Product Development, Ford Land, HR, Quality, Service, Finance, MP&L, Ford Production System, Recruiting, Plant IT, Paint, Final Area, Body, Machining, Facilities Engineering, Engine Design….

Ford Motors and KM Activity Overview

TRANSFER OF BEST PRACTICES:

EXPERTISE LOCATOR SYSTEM

DECISION SUPPORT SYSTEMS

LESSONS LEARNED

CONTENT MANAGEMENT

AFTER-ACTION REVIEWS

TRANSFER OF BEST PRACTICES:

is a push process with defined roles and responsibilities.

communities share proven practices that have made an improvement to a business process, not ideas.

practices are shared through picture sheets, video clips, and documentation.

The key to success was measuring the value of the knowledge transfer and the resulting replications.

EXPERTISE LOCATOR SYSTEM

Each major organization has lists of experts, usually accessible from their home page.

Depending on the organization, some do have details about the person’s experiences and expertise.

This is especially prevalent in the research and product development organizations.

The enterprise “People Search” is a common directory of every employee with e-mail access.

This directory does describe the job functions.

DECISION SUPPORT SYSTEMS

Each major organization in ford has its own derivatives designed to suit their business needs.

Each are funded and maintained by the respective IT support for that organization.

Six Sigma includes some refined decision support systems as tools to aid Black Belts in analyzing data and suggesting where to focus Six Sigma efforts.

LESSONS LEARNED

A lessons learned repository was created in 1997 at Ford with the intent of allowing anyone to submit or retrieve a lesson learned.

“lesson learned” was not clearly defined, nor was there any governance as to the submissions.

The lessons learned database was deactivated in 2001.

Currently, “powertrain” operations has developed expanding a process called the preventive corrective action system, where a lesson learned is defined as “a corrective action that has been effectively closed, can be replicated, and is fed back into (ford’s) quality operating systems to ensure permanent change.”

CONTENT MANAGEMENT

A lack of content is one reason that duplication of effort or mistakes happen.

At Ford, content management is a well-defined process for any documentation that is ultimately searchable on its intranet.

A strict governance and review process guides anyone who needs to post to the central repository, or enterprise knowledge base.

There is a charge associated with the posting that in effect funds the enterprise knowledge base content management process.

The cost varies with the volume of activity.

AFTER-ACTION REVIEWS

After-Action Reviews are routinely held during the course of any major project.

For example, the product development function uses the Ford product development system with milestone at key timing dates.

The decision to advance to the next milestone requires reflection concerning if the goals have been met and what went well or what went wrong.

. If necessary, lessons learned during this process are brought back into the operating system to ensure change.

Recent Trends regarding KM

Principles

Capture only proven, high value practices.

The process improvement must contibute a well defined business value.

The process improvement must be replicable.

There are specific roles and responsibilities.

Process:

Identify and submit a new best practice.

Review of the submissions.

Replication.

Managing the process.

Selection and Replication of Proven Practices at Ford

IMPLEMENTATIONIMPLEMENTATION

LOCAL REVIEWLOCAL REVIEWAPPROVE & APPROVE & DISTRIBUTEDISTRIBUTECOLLECTCOLLECT

MANAGEMENTMANAGEMENTREVIEW OFREVIEW OFRESULTSRESULTS

FEEDBACKFEEDBACK

LessonsLessonsLearnedLearned

DreamsDreamsNightmaresNightmares

FPSFPS

CPIPSCPIPS

SiteSiteVisitsVisits

PROVEN VALUED PRACTICESPROVEN VALUED PRACTICES

TaskTask

BEST PRACTICE REPLICATION PROCESSBEST PRACTICE REPLICATION PROCESSWITH PRESCRIBED ROLES & RESPONSIBILITIESWITH PRESCRIBED ROLES & RESPONSIBILITIES

SOURCES OF SOURCES OF IDEASIDEAS

8D’s8D’s6-Sigma6-Sigma

Create & Capture Knowledge: BPR Steps 1-3

# 1: Draft Practice: Focal Point at a Location enters Proven Practices into BPR.

# 2: # 2: Review Draft Practice:Review Draft Practice: Gatekeeper reviews Draft Gatekeeper reviews Draft Practices for clarity and completeness. Collaborates with Practices for clarity and completeness. Collaborates with Subject Matter Experts.Subject Matter Experts.

# 3: # 3: Approved Practice:Approved Practice: Gatekeeper approves only High- Gatekeeper approves only High-Value Proven Practices. Value Proven Practices.

Communicate & Leverage Knowledge: BPR Steps 4-6

# 4: Automatic email notification of Approved Practices to all the Community Focal Points at each Location.

# 5: # 5: Practices reviewedPractices reviewed by team members at each location by team members at each location to determine applicability.to determine applicability.

# 6: # 6: Adopt/ Not Adopt DecisionAdopt/ Not Adopt Decision: At each location : At each location Leadership decides priorities of applicable practices. “Copy Leadership decides priorities of applicable practices. “Copy with Pride” with Pride”

Manage and Recognize: BPR Steps 7-9

# 7: Feedback: At each location, Focal Point provides feedback to the System - adoption decision and value of the adoption.

# 8: # 8: Reports:Reports: Location Summary Report, Location Summary Report, Community Summary Report, etc., available to Community Summary Report, etc., available to any Ford Employee.any Ford Employee.

# 9: # 9: RecognitionRecognition of both the Best Practice Creator as well of both the Best Practice Creator as well as the Replicator – Placards. as the Replicator – Placards.

Results Summary

10,000+ replications/yr.

2800+ active high value practices have resulted in: $1.5+ Billion of identified value $1 Billion of actual value added to the company Saved more then $ 600 million in past three years.

53 Communities of Practice launched with 2115 Focal Points.

Health & Safety and Environmental derivatives of the process proactively distribute incidents and corrective actions.

Patents have been applied for the software and process derivatives.

Process licensed to Shell Oil, Nabisco, and Kraft Foods.

Community of Practices

KM Portals

Enterprise Knowledge Base (EKB) : strict governance & taxonomy

Document repository of 1 million documents Prime intent – source of information

regarding the activities in org. Sub- portals Highly customizable

TGRW

Things gone right/wrong-files.

TGR capture information about events that facilitate task accomplishment.

TGW captures information about events that stand in way of task accomplishment.

Strategies for Successful Knowledge Sharing at Ford motors

# 10: Tell stories, with sufficient details.

# 9: Establish a process for filtering out trivial, low-value practices.

Three stages of filtering, Focal Point, Administrator, and of course peer pressure – if the Focal Points in the community start seeing low value practices in the system, the originator will surely hear about it.

# 8: If you build it they will not come. Push the knowledge to users.

# 7: System must be able to capture the value of

the practice.

# 6: Senior Leadership sponsorship is necessary, but not sufficient.

# 5: The system must be available to the grass-roots level.

Strategies for Successful Knowledge Sharing at Ford motors

Strategies of Successful Knowledge Sharing at Ford motors

# 4: Provide peer-recognition of people who share knowledge.

# 3: Hi-Tech works only if there is Hi-Touch.

# 2: System must have automatic feedback.

# 1: Culture of knowledge sharing must exist.

Conclusions

1. Capture Hi-Value, Proven Practices.

2. Recognize participants

3. Culture of knowledge sharing