Background of the Knowledge Aware Approach
Developed by Auros Knowledge Systems, Knowledge Aware has proven valuable to industry leaders in managing knowledge.
Knowledge Aware is a comprehensive approach to continuously collect, deliver, and actively apply trusted knowledge within the flow of work.
With it, knowledge is continuously being captured, shared, reused, updated, and validated across teams, languages, and time. Unlike traditional knowledge management strategies, the Knowledge Aware approach not only captures knowledge from best practices, employee knowledge, lessons learned, methods, requirements, standards, and techniques, but also delivers the knowledge needed to employees and departments as they work.
Since knowledge is delivered when and where it’s needed, employees won’t have to waste time manually searching for and sharing knowledge. As a result, technical decision-making and analysis are positively influenced, and organizational efficiency and product quality is improved – saving the organization valuable time and resources.
Learn How the Knowledge Aware Approach Can Help Your Organization
During the 60-minute consultation, a lead Knowledge Aware consultant will show you everything you need to know about the Knowledge Aware approach, such as: how it works, how other organizations use it, and the opportunities it has for your organization. Your team will learn whether the Knowledge Aware approach is right for your organization and gain a better understanding of how your organizational knowledge can be more effectively captured and reused.
Auros Knowledge Systems is the Leading Knowledge Aware Solution Provider
Auros Knowledge Systems is the leading provider of Knowledge Aware software and services and has rapidly become the go-to solution to provide value across multiple disciplines, such as manufacturing engineering, plant operations, product development, project management, quality, and supplier quality. Today, Auros is used by over 40,000 active global users and many successful globally recognized organizations.
Why Use the Knowledge Aware Approach?
The Pressure Is Increasing
Organizations around the world are pressured now, more than ever, to meet tighter deadlines and produce a higher quality product; all with fewer resources. Being able to operate in a more efficient and effective state starts with how your organization manages and reuses its organizational knowledge. Many recurring errors can be eliminated when knowledge is shared effectively. Imagine what your organization would look like if you instead operated in a state of continuous learning and effortless recall; where knowledge is continuously being captured, shared, and reused across the organization. As the pressure to operate more efficiently continues to increase, organizations are transitioning into a better way of managing their knowledge, through the Knowledge Aware approach.
Knowledge Aware Carries a Competitive Advantage
The Knowledge Aware approach gives its users a competitive advantage by providing a more efficient and effective way to operate and share technical knowledge. With this approach, organizational knowledge is turned into a valuable asset that drives efficiency and spurs innovation. However, as organizations are beginning to adopt this new approach, competitive advantages will be minimized. Establishing proficiency in Knowledge Aware today may be the most important strategy for achieving success tomorrow. So will your organization be one of the industry leaders that adopt Knowledge Aware now or an industry laggard that will be catching up later?
It Has Unique Characteristics Traditional Approaches Cannot Achieve
Like most organizations, you may find that your current knowledge management strategy doesn’t effectively capture and share knowledge as well as intended; whether you’re using checklists, document vaults, custom solutions, or human recall, this is common. Although these solutions store knowledge well, there are still many setbacks, such as: information quickly becomes out of date, is difficult to locate, and lacks the ability to link related knowledge. The Knowledge Aware approach solves these knowledge management problems and takes a more unique approach. What makes the Knowledge Aware approach different is that it breaks down knowledge into more manageable and digestible pieces of knowledge. It has the capability to deliver knowledge when and where it’s needed – taking a more active role in the decision-making process. Finally, the Knowledge Aware approach is formed from the bottom-up; allowing it to organically grow across the organization. These kinds of behaviors cannot be achieved in the form of documents, KBE tooks, search engines, or wikis.
Organizational Benefits the Knowledge Aware Approach Provides
- Increases productivity of knowledge workers
- Ensures consistent multi-location processes and techniques through lessons sharing
- Retains the technical know-how as a durable asset that is not susceptible to ebbs and flows of the technical workforce
- Prevents recurring errors and omissions
- Unifies disparate repositories/formats of know-how into a single multi-functional knowledge-hub and services
Benefits from the Knowledge Aware Approach
Although its roots reside in discrete manufacturing, the Knowledge Aware approach is designed to help any organization that uses technical knowledge; or an organization experiencing recurring mistakes, variation between projects, and has uncertainty in knowledge reuse. If your organization falls within this category, know that the Knowledge Aware approach is already in your future and is on its way to replacing the existing strategies. To learn about the ways you and your organization can benefit from the Knowledge Aware approach, click on the title, department, or industry below.
By Title
Knowledge Aware is fundamentally different from other Knowledge Management strategies
The Knowledge Aware approach is a different approach to managing technical knowledge. There is nothing like it. While legacy ‘explicit’ Knowledge Management approaches rely heavily on document-centric libraries and databases, the Knowledge Aware approach manages knowledge directly and establishes an integrated knowledge process where knowledge is provisioned and actively participates within the flow-of-work.
The 10 Tenets of the Knowledge Aware Approach
The ten tenets convey the constituent principles and philosophy that enable the Knowledge Aware Approach
1. Technical Know-How is Broadly Elicited Across the Enterprise
The elicitation process of the Knowledge Aware approach utilizes a bottom-up approach and is decentralized, organic, self-organizing, and community based.
2. Elicited Know-How is Transformed into Retained Know-How
Retained know-how is experience and knowledge that has been systematically captured, preserved, and readied for re-use by others.
3. Retained Know-How is Actionable, Modular, and Granular
Retained know-how must be encapsulated in a granular structure, or a ‘packet’, that promotes its fitness for re-use.
4. Retained Know-How is Dynamically Provisioned into the Flow-of-Work
Retained know-how is dynamically provisioned into the flow-of-work based on contextual cues where it is reused. ‘Searching’ is obviated in favor of ‘provisioning’ as the primary means by which a user will encounter and engage with Retained Know-how.
5. Everyday Digital Tools Harness Retained Know-How without Prior Awareness of its Existence
Retained know-how becomes a dynamic content service to digital tools. ‘Knowledge as a Service’.
6. Quality of Retained Know-How is Actively and Continuously Measured and Monitored
Retained know-how quality can be thought of as a Signal-to-Noise ratio (a ratio of desired qualities of the know-how, ‘signal’, compared with undesired qualities, ‘noise’, measured in each packet of the retained know-how).
7. Retained Know-How is Stakeholder Point-of-View (Voice) Specific
Discrete voices are maintained within the retained know-how. Voices are independent points of view or domains within shared contexts. Retained Know-how should not be normalized.
8. A Packet of Retained Know-How is maintained as the Single Gold Source
In the Knowledge Aware technique, retained know-how is never copied; all reuse of Retained Know-how references the single gold source directly and without copy.
9. The Extended Enterprise or Supply Chain is Included as a Source of Retained Know-How
The deliberate and real-time sharing of retained know-how across suppliers and customers is a logical extension of the Knowledge Aware concept.
10. Data derived from the systematic reuse of Retained Know-how is collected and analyzed to creating insights and user engagement.
Data analytics are employed in the discovery and visibility of insights with respect to the Knowledge Aware Process.
Frequently Asked Questions
What Do You Mean by 'Knowledge' or 'Know-How'?
Knowledge is a form of information, fact, or skill acquired through experience or education. Examples include: standards, best practices, lessons learned, checklists, and experienced employee knowledge.
What is Knowledge Management?
Knowledge Management is the deliberate and on-going attempt to capture and reuse the collective learnings of groups of individuals bound together by a common purpose. There are a wide variety of technologies that support this umbrella term. Examples include: document vaults, search engines, collaborative portals, rule bases, workflow engines, and expertise registries.
What are the Elements of a Knowledge Management Strategy?
Active and agile knowledge
The old knowledge library paradigm is too static. Knowledge is active, alive and has greatest value when used. It must be accessible, useful and relevant. Engineers don’t have time to stop what they are doing to dig for a manual — assuming they know where to look in the first place. Knowledge must be pushed to workers in context.
Accessible, complete and current knowledge
Knowledge is stored in a variety of disconnected documents that quickly fall out of date. An engineer may not have time to search for specification documents, best practices presentations and various spreadsheets of data. Assuming the engineer grabs old parameters without realizing they are outdated, he/she may invest hours in a solution that is totally out of specification. Systems must make it easy for users to access complete and current knowledge.
Make knowledge capture part of the process
If people don’t have time to go search through documents, they surely don’t have time to create them. Efforts can vary in quality, depending on who creates them. Capturing knowledge, evaluating it, refining it and updating it has to be an organic part of the workflow — or it simply will not happen.
Structured flexibility
Knowledge takes many forms and is used in many ways. An employee might need materials specifications, dimension measurements, picture maps, work instructions and inter-dependency schedules to design a part. The system must be flexible and able to completely capture and structure that content for access and reuse.
Reward knowledge contributions
Some people fear sharing their knowledge will make it easier to ship their job to China. Others take genuine pride in being the go-to person when someone has a question. A well-managed knowledge system uses such cultural issues to motivate, recognize and reward people for contributing. They create a virtuous circle of engagement, trust and use, with practical rewards that encourage more engagement and more use.
What is Auros, compared to Knowledge Aware?
Knowledge Aware is an approach to managing knowledge. It breaks down knowledge into digestible bite-sized pieces and delivers it to employees and departments as they work, when they need it.
Auros Knowledge Systems is the leading Knowledge Aware software and service provider. The name of the software sold by Auros Knowledge Systems is called Auros. Along with the Auros software, Auros Knowledge Systems provides services to customers, committing to long-term customer success, through high-quality consulting, customer support, and continuous innovation of product.
How to Tell if Knowledge Aware is Right for You
There’s a quick and easy way for you to determine whether your organization will benefit from the Knowledge Aware approach – that’s with the 7 Signs You need the Knowledge Aware approach infographic. If you notice any of these signs within your organization, it’s most likely that you will receive major benefits from adopting this approach. To get started, click the ‘Download Infographic’ button below.
