http://www.aiai.ed.ac.uk/~alm/kamlnks.

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ntroduction

Enterprises are realising how important it is to "know what they know" and be able to
make maximum use of the knowledge. This knowledge resides in many different places
such as: databases, knowledge bases, filing cabinets and peoples' heads and are
distributed right across the enterprise. All too often one part of an enterprise repeats work
of another part simply because it is impossible to keep track of, and make use of,
knowledge in other parts. Enterprises need to know:

• what their knowledge assets are;

• how to manage and make use of these assets to get maximum return.

Most traditional company policies and controls focus on the tangible assets of the
company and leave unmanaged their important knowledge assets.

Success in an increasingly competitive marketplace depends critically on the quality of

knowledge which organisations apply to their key business processes. For example the
supply chain depends on knowledge of diverse areas including raw materials, planning,
manufacturing and distribution. Likewise product development requires knowledge of
consumer requirements, new science, new technology, marketing etc.

The challenge of deploying the knowledge assets of an organisation to create competitive

advantage becomes more crucial as:

• The marketplace is increasingly competitive and the rate of innovation is rising,

so that knowledge must evolve and be assimilated at an ever faster rate.
• Corporations are organising their businesses to be focused on creating customer
value. Staff functions are being reduced as are management structures. There is a
need to replace the informal knowledge management of the staff function with
formal methods in customer aligned business processes.
• Competitive pressures are reducing the size of the workforce which holds this
knowledge.
• Knowledge takes time to experience and acquire. Employees have less and less
time for this.
• There are trends for employees to retire earlier and for increasing mobility,
leading to loss of knowledge.
• There is a need to manage increasing complexity as small operating companies a
re trans-national sourcing operations.

A change in strategic direction may result in the loss of knowledge in a specific

area. A subsequent reversal in policy may then lead to a renewed requirement for
this knowledge, but the employees with that knowledge may no longer be there.
Definition

Knowledge assets are the knowledge regarding markets, products, technologies and
organisations, that a business owns or needs to own and which enable its business
processes to generate profits, add value, etc.

Knowledge management is not only about managing these knowledge assets but
managing the processes that act upon the assets. These processes include: developing
knowledge; preserving knowledge; using knowledge, and sharing knowledge.

Therefore, Knowledge management involves the identification and analysis of available

and required knowledge assets and knowledge asset related processes, and the subsequent
planning and control of actions to develop both the assets and the processes so as to fulfil
organisational objectives.

Why is Knowledge Management Difficult

There are many problems associated with identifying these knowledge assets and being
able to use them and manage them in an efficient and cost-effective manner. Enterprises
need:

• to have an enterprise-wide vocabulary to ensure that the knowledge is correctly

understood;
• to be able to identify, model and explicitly represent their knowledge;
• to share and re-use their knowledge among differing applications for various
types of users; this implies being able to share existing knowledge sources and
also future ones;
• to create a culture that encourages knowledge sharing.

Knowledge engineering methods and tools have come a long way towards addressing the
use of a company's knowledge assets. They provide disciplined approaches to designing
and building knowledge-based applications. There are tools to support the capture,
modelling, validation, verification and maintenance of the knowledge in these
applications. However these tools do not extend to supporting the processes for managing
knowledge at all levels within the organisation.

At the strategic level the organisation needs to be able to analyse and plan its business in
terms of the knowledge it currently has and the knowledge it needs for future business
processes. At the tactical level the organisation is concerned with identifying and
formalising existing knowledge, acquiring new knowledge for future use, archiving it in
organisational memories and creating systems that enable effective and efficient
application of the knowledge within the organisation. At the operational level knowledge
is used in everyday practice by professional personnel who need access to the right
knowledge, at the right time, in the right location.
A Knowledge Management Framework

The knowledge management framework we use was originally based on work by van der
Spek and de Hoog. It covers

• identifying what knowledge assets a company possesses

o Where is the knowledge asset?
o What does it contain?
o What is its use?
o What form is it in?
o How accessible is it?
• analysing how the knowledge can add value
o What are the opportunities for using the knowledge asset?
o What would be the effect of its use?
o What are the current obstacles to its use?
o What would be its increased value to the company?
• specifying what actions are necessary to achieve better usability & added value
o How to plan the actions to use the knowledge asset?
o How to enact actions?
o How to monitor actions?
• reviewing the use of the knowledge to ensure added value
o Did the use of it produce the desired added value?
o How can the knowledge asset be maintained for this use?

Did the use create new opportunities?

Techniques to Manage Knowledge

We believe that the knowledge modelling techniques that exist to support the use of the
knowledge, along with traditional business management techniques, provide a starting
point to manage the knowledge assets within a company. Therefore the the techniques we
employ for managing knowledge within the organisation are drawn from these two
distinct areas:

• the techniques that have been used previously from business management, for
example, SWOT (Strengths Weaknesses Opportunities Threats) analysis,
balanced scorecards (Kaplan, Robert S.; Norton, David P. (1996)), modelling
languages such as: IDEF (Process Flow and Object State Description Capture
Method, Mayer, R., Cullinane, T., de Witte, P., Knappernberger, W., Perakath, B.,
& Wells, S. (1992)) and RADs (Role Activity Diagrams, Ould, M. (1993));
• the knowledge techniques that have been used previously for the disciplined
development of knowledge-based applications (Benus, B. (1993) and Schreiber,
A. T., Akkermans, J. M., Anjewierden, A. A., De Hoog, R., Van De Velde, W., &
Wielinga, B. J. (1998)).
Our recommended approach is a multi-perspective modelling approach. Several models
need to be developed, each of which represents a different perspective on the organisation
which can be characterised as “How, What, Who, Where, When and Why”

• How the organisation carries out its business - modelling the business processes
• What the processes manipulate - modelling the resources
• Who carries out the processes - modelling capabilities, roles and authority
• Where a process is carried out - modelling of the communication between agents
• When a process is carried out - this specifies the control over processes

Knowledge Management Roadmaps

Knowledge Asset Road Maps highlight the critical knowledge assets required by an
organisation to meet market needs five to ten years in the future. They are mechanisms
enabling organisations to visualise their critical knowledge assets, the relationships
between these and the skills, competencies and technologies required to meet future
market demands. They allow:

• individual knowledge management actions to be defined and justified in terms of

their contribution to the overall aims.
• effective communication of the work and progress on the programme to the
participants and observers.
• management aids for those involved in carrying out the programme and
measuring its progress.
• more effective communication between users, researchers, technicians, managers
and directors involved in the various aspects of the programme.
• sensible decisions to be taken on the opportunities for further exploiting the
results of the programme.
• the identification of knowledge gaps that need to be filled.

The Road Map is a living document regularly updated and serves as a framework for the
monitoring of the knowledge management programme. The document reflects the current
state of the interrelationships between work in progress and proposed for the future and
the overall milestones and aims of the programme. Our work on knowledge management
road maps is more fully described (Macintosh, A., Filby, I. & Tate, A., 1998).

IT Support for Knowledge Management

AIAI, at the University of Edinburgh is concerned with how specific aspects of AI,
namely modelling, ontologies and planning techniques can support knowledge
management. These techniques allow an integrated support framework to be developed
for knowledge management based on adaptive workflow techniques.

This short web-based presentation:

 • states what we understand the term knowledge management to mean;
• describes the processes that an organisation has to put in place to undertake this
task effectively;
• outlines how various AI techniques can contribute to the management;
• and finally proposes that adaptive workflow provides the infrastructure to
integrate these different techniques.

External Links
Websites | Applications | Tools | References | Mailing lists | Events

Websites

Below are sites that include many references and links to electronic KM resources:

• The international knowledge management network site, some interesting news

and information, it used to be just an ftp site with position papers but it was
updated to a web site in summer '96. Established by CIBIT and the University of
Amsterdam
• The knowledge management forum site, another interesting site that users can
contribute their position papers on the subject. It also has a good reference page
with abstracts.
• Knowledge management server at the University of Texas at Austin - this has
been re-vamped and is very informative with a good publications page and case
study pages.
• Dr. Karl E. Sveiby knowledge management web site at Queensland University of
Technology - it references the "tango" a non-computerised business simulation for
knowledge management.
• Knowledge Management web site with alot of useful information.

Applications & Research

• Work carried out at AIAI on the Enterprise Project providing a framework for
enterprise modelling and integration.
• Enterprise related work at other sites
• A collaborative project involving the NWAIAG and supported by the ERDF, SRB
and DTI, which aims to address the problems associated with Knowledge
Management and provide help and support for companies who want to manage
this asset.
• Report on work at George Washington University on OKAM Organisational
Knowledge Asset Management.
• UCSF Knowledge Management's Web server which lists some of the internal
projects being undertaken at the University.
• Ikarus is an experimental knowledge management project with a World Wide
Web interface that uses Netscape 3 or Internet Explore. It is being undertaken by
the Language Analysis & Knowledge Engineering (LAKE) Group Department of
Computer Science, University of Ottawa.
 • Code4 (Conceptually Oriented Description Environment) is a general purpose
knowledge management project intended for analysing, debugging, and delivering
knowledge about some domain. It is being undertaken by Artificial Intelligence
Laboratory, Department of Computer Science, University of Ottawa

Tools

There are very few tools providing a truly integrated set of functions to support the tasks
associated with knowledge management. The following lists some tools that have been
used to support various aspect of managing knowledge:

• Knowledge Capture:
o PC PACK is a portable package of integrated tools for requirements and
knowledge engineering.
o Clementine Data Mining (or Knowledge Discovery) Software package
from ISL
o Intelligent Miner another data mining tool this time from IBM
o The Information Discovery System (IDIS) a data mining tool from
Information Discovery.
• Knowledge Sharing:
o ART*Enterprise - object-oriented client/server tool with case-based
retrieval of both structured and unstructured information from Brightware
o GrapeVINE - two versions one for lotus notes and one for Netscape in
which users can set up an interest profile that identifies what is useful to
them and so filter information.
o Knowledger Software - two products PKM (the Personal Knowledge
Manager) and PDP (the Personal Development Plan) both based on Lotus
Notes.
o Knowledge Xchange - TM Knowledge Management System - a Lotus
Notes based system, the current users are Andersen Consulting
professionals.

References

• IEEE Intelligent Systems Special Issue On Knowledge Management And

Knowledge Distribution Over The Internet; to be published Autumn, 1999.
• Macintosh, A., Filby, I. and John Kingston; Knowledge Management Techniques:
Teaching & Dissemination Concepts; Journal of Human Computer Studies,
Special Issue on Organizational Memories & Knowledge Management, Academic
Press, to be published September/October 1999.
• Journal of Human Computer Studies, Special Issue on Organizational Memories
& Knowledge Management, Academic Press, to be published September/October
1999.
• AIAI-TR-228 "Knowledge Asset Road Maps"; Ann Macintosh, Ian Filby, John
Kingston, and Austin Tate; in Proceedings of The Second International
 Conference on Practical Aspects of Knowledge Management (PAKM98), 29-30
October, 1998; Basel, Switzerland.
• Proceedings of PAKM98 Second International Conference on the Practical
Aspects of Knowledge Management, 29-30th October 1998, Basel, Switzerland
• OM'98 ECAI'98 Interdisciplinary Workshop on Building, Maintaining, and Using
Organizational Memories (OM-98, Brighton, UK, held on August, 24th - 25th
1998.
• Proceedings of KAW'98 The Eleventh Workshop on Knowledge Acquisition,
Modeling and Management,Banff, Alberta,Canada held on Saturday 18th to
Thursday 23rd April, 1998.
• Journal of Universal Computer Science (Special Issue on IT for Knowledge
Management), 3 (8), 1997, Springer-Verlag. (To be reprinted in: Borghoff, U.M.
and Pareschi, R., (Eds.), Information Technology for Knowledge Management.
Springer-Verlag, 1998)
• ARPA Knowledge Sharing Effort public library.
• Some management science references on managing knowledge creation.
• Intranet/Knowledge Management Resource Center a good publications reference
site
• Karl M Wiig; books published and distributed by Schema Press, 5211 Vicksburg
Dr, Arlington, TX 76017; Fax (817) 478-1048; Email
71117,1427@compuserve.com The 3 volumes are:
o Volume 1; Knowledge Management Foundations, Thinking about
thinking, How people and organisations create, represent and use
knowledge; ISBN 0-9638925-0-9
o Volume 2; Knowledge Management, The central focus for intelligent-
acting organisations; ISBN 0-9638925-1-7
o Volume 3; Knowledge Management methods, Practical approaches to
managing knowledge; ISBN 0-9638925-2-5
• Summary of results of an AIAI 1994 survey describing the major computer-based
projects being undertaken to support the more effective use of corporate
knowledge - now very dated but still has some useful links.
• Abecker, A., Bernardi, A., Hinkelmann, K., Kühn, O., & Sintek, M. (1997).
Towards a Well-Founded Technology for Organizational Memories, in B.R.
Gaines, & R. Uthurusamy (Eds.), Artificial Intelligence in Knowledge
Management, Papers from the 1997 AAAI Spring Symposium, Menlo Park,
AAAI Press.
• Benus, B. (1993). Organisational modelling and Knowledge Management,
Department of Social Science Informatics, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam.
• Dieng, R., Corby, O., Giboin, A., & Ribière, M. (1998). Methods and Tools for
Corporate Knowledge Management. Proceedings of the 11th Banff Workshop on
Knowledge Acquisition, Modelling and Management, KAW’98, Banff, Alberta,
Canada.
• Kaplan, Robert S.; Norton, David P. (1996). Balanced Scorecard: Translating
Strategy into; Harvard Business School Press Book; Product Number: 6513.
• Kingston, J.K.C., Lydiard T., & Griffith, A., (1997). Multi-Perspective
Modelling of Air Campaign Planning; Proceedings of the International Joint
Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI '97), Nagoya, Japan.
• Kühn, O. & Abecker, A. (1997). Corporate Memories for Knowledge
Management in Industrial Practice: Prospects and Challenges. J.UCS, 3 No. 8
pp. 929-954.
• Macintosh, A., Filby, I., Kingston, J., Tate, A., (1998). Knowledge Asset Road
Maps. Proceedings of The Second International Conference on Practical Aspects
of Knowledge Management (PAKM98); Basel, Switzerland.
• Maurer, F. & Dellen, B. (1998). Concept for an Internet-based Process-Oriented
Knowledge Management Environment, in proceedings of the 11th Banff
Workshop on Knowledge Acquisition, Modelling and Management, KAW’98,
Banff, Alberta, Canada.
• Mayer, R., Cullinane, T., De Witte, P., Knappernberger, W., Perakath, B., &
Wells, S. (1992) ICCE IDEF3 Process Description Capture Method Report, (al/tr-
1992-0057). Technical report, Air Force Systems Command, Wright-Pattersson
Air Force Base, Ohio.
• Ould, M. (1993). Series of articles on Strim/RADs, in Iopener, the Journal of the
IOPT Club for the Introduction of Process technology; V1:5, V2:1&3.
• Schreiber, A.Th., Wielinga, B.J., De Hoog, R. & Akkermans, J.M. (1994).
CommonKADS: A Comprehensive Methodology for KBS development, IEEE
Expert 9(6).
• Schreiber, A. T., Akkermans, J. M., Anjewierden, A. A., De Hoog, R., Van De
Velde, W., & Wielinga, B. J. (1998). Engineering of Knowledge: The
CommonKADS Methodology. University of Amsterdam.
• Stader J., (1996). Results of the Enterprise Project; Intelligent Systems Integration
Programme, Proceedings of Expert Systems '96, the 16th Annual Conference of
the British Computer Society Specialist Group on Expert Systems; Cambridge,
UK.
• Wielinga, B. (1992) “The KADS Knowledge Modelling Approach”, In
Proceedings of the Japanese Knowledge Acquisition Workshop (JKAW’92).
• Van Der Spek, R. & De Hoog, R. (1995). A Framework for Knowledge
Management Methodology pp 379-398 in Knowledge Management Methods:
Practical Approaches to Managing Knowledge. Vol. 3 of 3, Schema Press,
Arlington, Texas,. ISBN 0-9638925-2-5.
• Van Der Spek, R. & Spijkervet, A. (1997). Knowledge Management: Dealing
Intelligently with Knowledge. Knowledge Management Network (CIBIT/CSC).
ISBN 90-75709-02-1.
Events

• IJCAI-99 Workshop on Knowledge Management and Organizational Memories,

Stockholm, Sweden, 31st July 1999.
• ISMICK99 Sixth International Symposium on the Management of Industrial and
Corporate Knowledge, The Netherlands, 15-17 November 1999.
• Workshop on Knowledge Management and Knowledge Distribution through the
Internet at the KAW-99 (Twelfth Workshop on Knowledge Acquisition,
Modeling, and Management) Voyager Inn, Banff, Canada, October 16-22, 1999.
• ES99 The Nineteenth SGES International Conference on Knowledge Based
Systems and Applied Artificial Intelligence, Peterhouse College, Cambridge, UK

December 13th-15th 1999.

• Bringing Knowledge to Business Processes, Workshop in the AAAI Spring

Spring Symposium Series 2000