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Abstract:
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The present master thesis carries out a study on the implementation of a ―Knowledge
Management System‖ in the supply chain department of an internationally reputed
electronics firm: Infineon Technologies AG, from now on referred to as ―Infineon‖.
The first part of the study consists on carrying out a knowledge audit within Infineon‘s supply
chain; this part concentrates on determining where the knowledge is and how it flows within
Infineon‘s supply chain. After having analysed the current state of knowledge management
and having examined the results of a survey that gathers information about all the problems
that affect Infineon‘s supply chain we will identify all those problems that come from
Infineon‘s current policy regarding knowledge management.
After having found the main problems that affect Infineon‘s supply chain with regard to
knowledge management we will come up with a general solution. As it will be seen, the
solution will consist of four different measures that combined will give birth to a very solid
knowledge management system, each one of the four measures aims at solving certain
problems.
The most important measure and the most innovative one, will try to refurbish the
company‘s culture and increase its employees‘ awareness on knowledge creation and
sharing. It will make use of the internal social network to make all employees concerned
about the problems that the SC suffers and its potential solutions.
The other three measures, more traditional ones, exist already in the company but have not
attained the expected results; the goal of the new knowledge management system will be to
make them succeed. They consist in the creation of a knowledge repository with all the
company knowledge, the implementation of an internal ―Wikipedia‖ which will be called
―iWiki‖ and the creation of an academy to give trainings to the employees on supply chain
related topics. The three measures, that will sometimes overlap, will complement each other
in a way that every single employee finds his way to better access and share knowledge
Due to time constraints and to the nature of this master thesis only the first measure of the
proposed knowledge management system will be fully developed and we will even witness
the first steps of its implementation. However, the other two measures will be explained and
further guidance will be given so that the project can be continued in the future. |
