International Knowledge Aware Association

To better understand Knowledge Aware, it is useful to examine its evolution from tactical point-of-use specific solutions to Enterprise Strategy. Most of the current Knowledge Aware practitioners discovered the Enterprise Strategy gradually and incidentally, as a result of successful tactical project progenitors.  

‘PLM’ as Knowledge Aware Progenitor Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) has been a successful progenitor for Knowledge Aware, mostly because it is already central to the complex of engineering processes. This centrality allows for infusion of PLM-based workflows with the Retained Know-how, creating a simple-yet-powerful enabler for achieving Knowledge Aware. However, PLM’s centrality serves to obscure, rather than to elucidate, the potential of Knowledge Aware, which requires a specialized set of tools around the Retained Know-how not intrinsic within PLM. Furthermore, some ingrained PLM methods/concepts actually run contrary to the optimal way of managing the Retained Know-how. For example, PLM methods conform to a centralized command and control model, while Knowledge Aware demands a more organic and bottom-up approach. Consequently, while PLM is an excellent point for reuse of the Retained Know-how, it is a poor choice for capturing, executing and servicing the Retained Know-how. 

The primary problems with using PLM-based approaches to manage the Retained Know-how are: 

• No support for the natural Knowledge Process: bottom-up, organic, network-type Retained Know-how elicitation. PLM systems are inherently Top-Down systems (see tenet #1) 
• No ready-made, executable structures (see KBE below) to encapsulate the Retained Knowhow within the current PLM. This encapsulation is critical for the Retained Know-how to become active. (see tenet #5) 
• No support for Signal-to-Noise management of the Retained Know-how. (see tenet #6) 
• Expensive, time-consuming programming and customizations required to mimic behaviors that promote Knowledge Aware. Of course, one might assume that a firm embarking on a PLM customization strategy for Knowledge Aware would know what to customize. However, there is a important difference between what technology potentially could do and what it actually does. Currently, the state-of-the-art PLM tools are not capable of producing a Knowledge Aware solution. 

Clearly, the role of PLM should not be underestimated for its intended purposes: life-cycle management of product data, product configuration management and workflow. The statements made here simply critique typical PLM technology and mindset in the context of its core ability to promote the tenets of Knowledge Aware in the absence of other specialized supporting technologies.