Saving endangered knowledge

An IDS team works on ways to retain and leverage the accumulated wisdom of experienced engineering employees

BY SUSIE UNKELESS


More than half of the Boeing work force will be eligible for retirement within the next decade. That's roughly 80,000 employees' cumulative corporate wisdom walking out the door.

That reality raises a question: How can Boeing retain and reuse this treasure trove of knowledge? So far, beyond specialized and regional efforts to preserve data and intellectual property, there has been no enterprisewide initiative to formally capture practical engineering knowledge gained from experience. But the Engineering Knowledge Management team within Integrated Defense Systems is working on the answer. It is creating processes and employing tools to retain intellectual assets and ensure their transfer from a departing generation of employees to an existing and incoming work force.

"Knowledge management is a way of making collective insight available to anyone within the organization," said Thad Sandford, IDS vice president of engineering, "It deals not only with knowledge and expertise that resides in the minds of our people, but also with the work and documents they leave behind.

"There's no mystery to this," Sandford said. "It's really just a collection of everyday processes that are an important part of keeping our company strong and competitive."

The IDS site at Canoga Park, Calif., is leading the way. There, the Knowledge Management Portfolio team, led by Kiho Sohn, is focusing on coordinating common tools and best practices across all IDS sites and implementing them depending on the need. The ultimate goal is to expand the vision of Boeing as a "network-centric" company to one that's also "knowledge-centric."

KNOWLEDGE TO COMBAT 'BRAIN DRAIN'

A big challenge across Boeing is the need to capture tacit knowledge for future reuse. The KM team in Canoga Park currently employs electronic data capture, videotaping and mentoring methods.

Using a commercially available software tool that allows employees to ask and answer questions, capture data and generate a list of frequently asked questions, queries are routed to providers for review via e-mail. Once a question is answered, the system adds the information to the database for future use.

Over the past several years, many International Space Station and Space Shuttle jobs have transferred to the Boeing site in Houston. Once new hires are actually working in their new areas, Space Shuttle KM Focal Wayne Huning and his team make sure that on-the-job training is conducted at both the sending and receiving sites. "We're trying to identify the kind of knowledge that can't be gleaned from documentation, while enabling managers and teams to sustain long-term viability," he said.

In addition, videotaped interviews with experts are also used during orientation and as refresher courses for all employees.

A "Space Shuttle Expert Toolbox" also has been created to sustain the operations of the Space Shuttle systems and to support the learning process of the new engineers who will be certified as subsystem managers and those who will be performing tasks at the receiving sites.

Ron Johnson, vice president of Engineering and operations at Air Force Systems, said sites across IDS now have the ability to "distance train" from any location via the Engineering Self-Development and Training Web site. The secure site offers users a central repository for all engineering and related training courses. Features include an online library, streaming video, online course evaluation and credit. Also available is the IDS Lessons Learned and Best Practices Web site, a storage place of exemplary engineering approaches implemented to address the ways we do business.

FINDING KNOWLEDGE OUTSIDE

As the Boeing KM community grows, members are realizing that there also is knowledge to be gained from outside company walls. Boeing Advanced Information Systems—Maryland Operations knows firsthand the importance of potential employees in helping to create a robust process.

In late 2000, AIS began its examination of KM that led to an invitation from the enterprisewide Knowledge Management Users Group to its meeting in June 2003. What began as a way of AIS identifying Boeing's stance on KM became the basis of a good network that has allowed the operation to synchronize efforts with Boeing as a whole.

Today, potential employees, including some who are ultimately hired, are asked to give feedback on the interview process. Julie Parlon, core competency director for knowledge management at AIS, explained, "We want to know what works, what doesn't and what things are important to people considering employment with us. By offering network- and knowledge-sharing opportunities, we are more attractive to recruits in a competitive job market."

A CUSTOMER'S VIEW

The IDS Knowledge Management Strategies team—led by Jim Coogan, chair of Boeing's KM Community of Practice, and manager Lorrie Sivich—boasts a customer profile that includes the Space Shuttle Orbiter, Airborne Warning and Control System, B-1 and B-2, Future Combat Systems and the Delta launch program.

"Knowledge Management tools allow those of us still with the program to more fully understand why and how decisions were made. In addition, it allows us to avoid past mistakes," said John Griffin, B-2 Seattle site program manager.

Today the KM toolbox has expanded to include data mining and data access techniques. Using current search engines, these tools enable the system to understand the meaning in the text better and find more relevant search results for the user. Added to that, Library Services has improved Boeing employees' ability to access all of Boeing's knowledge by capturing books and articles using a single tool—Online Services, Catalogue and Resources—to search all Boeing library collections.

Sharing information is an integral part of how KM teams across the business measure the success of their efforts. Teams meet annually at KM Users Group meetings to discuss lessons learned and to map the next steps in the process. But retaining the knowledge is only half the battle. The end goal for the KM community is to ensure that Boeing's collective intellectual assets are easily accessible to those who need them, now and in the future.

"Time will certainly tell if this way of thinking and operating will become part of our workplace culture," said IDS Engineering KM executive sponsor Jeff Kincaid, "but for now the consensus seems to be that those who put their toe in the water end up taking a swim."

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For more information about the IDS Knowledge Management project, go to http://rdweb.rdyne.bna.boeing. com/kmcp/ on the Boeing Web.