KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT At FORD MOTORS by Amitesh Singh Yadav

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Knowledge Management at Ford Motors

• BY
• Amitesh SINGH YADAV

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Agenda

• Ford Profile, Comments
• History
• Ford Motors and KM Activities
• Principles and Process of BPR
• Results
• Strategies
• Conclusion

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Ford Profile

• Ranked 4 by Fortune 500
• 2012 Revenues -- US134.3 billion
• 2001 Global Unit Vehicle Sales 7 million
• 354,000 Employees

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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, MPL, Ford Production
  System, Recruiting, Plant IT, Paint, Final Area,
  Body, Machining, Facilities Engineering, Engine
  Design.

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Ford Motors and KM Activity Overview

• TRANSFER OF BEST PRACTICES
• EXPERTISE LOCATOR SYSTEM
• DECISION SUPPORT SYSTEMS
• LESSONS LEARNED
• CONTENT MANAGEMENT
• AFTER-ACTION REVIEWS

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• 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.

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• 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 persons 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.

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• 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.

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• 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 (fords) quality operating systems to
  ensure permanent change.

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• 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.

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• 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.

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Recent Trends regarding KM
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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.

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Process

• Identify and submit a new best practice.
• Review of the submissions.
• Replication.
• Managing the process.

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Selection and Replication of Proven Practices at
Ford
Lessons Learned
FPS
Site Visits
Task
SOURCES OF IDEAS
Dreams Nightmares
CPIPS
8Ds
6-Sigma
IMPLEMENTATION
PROVEN VALUED PRACTICES
BEST PRACTICE REPLICATION PROCESS WITH PRESCRIBED
ROLES RESPONSIBILITIES
APPROVE DISTRIBUTE
LOCAL REVIEW
MANAGEMENT REVIEW OF RESULTS
FEEDBACK
COLLECT
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Create Capture Knowledge BPR Steps 1-3

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

2 Review Draft Practice Gatekeeper reviews
Draft Practices for clarity and completeness.
Collaborates with Subject Matter Experts.
3 Approved Practice Gatekeeper approves only
High-Value Proven Practices.
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Communicate Leverage Knowledge BPR Steps 4-6

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

5 Practices reviewed by team members at each
location to determine applicability.
6 Adopt/ Not Adopt Decision At each location
Leadership decides priorities of applicable
practices. Copy with Pride
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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 Reports Location Summary Report, Community
Summary Report, etc., available to any Ford
Employee.
9 Recognition of both the Best Practice
Creator as well as the Replicator Placards.
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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.

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Community of Practices
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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

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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.

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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.
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Strategies for Successful Knowledge Sharing at
Ford motors

• 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.
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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.
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Conclusions

1. Capture Hi-Value, Proven Practices.
2. Recognize participants
3. Culture of knowledge sharing