Instruments of KM     KM Portal  Awards & Accolades

Tata Steel decided to embark on formal KM initiative in the year 1999. The beginning was made in July’99 to place a Knowledge Management (KM) programme for the company to systematically & formally share and transfer learning concepts, best practices and other implicit knowledge.
The emphasis on knowledge management was clearly demonstrated in 1999 while coining the vision statement of the company – which read “Tata Steel enters the new millennium with the confidence of learning and knowledge based organization…..” Then followed the new vision statement, co-created by the employees in 2001 (Fig. 1) which again identified ‘Manage Knowledge’ as one of the main pillars in strategy to become EVA+ by 2007. This clearly indicated the thrust Senior Management wanted on an initiative like KM.
The essence of Knowledge management is to capture the available abundant knowledge assets either in form of tacit (experience, learning from failure, thumb rules, etc.) or explicit (literature, reports, failure analysis etc.), to organize and transform the captured knowledge, and to facilitate its usage at right place and at the right time.

Phases of Knowledge Management

Starting from a small sapling in 1999, the KM system of Tata Steel underwent a lot of improvements, and changes. In the process, it passed through many learning phases to reach its current state. The various phases of KM spiral at Tata Steel are shown in Fig 2. In its latest phase, the Knowledge Management has been identified as one of the main enablers to make Tata Steel self reliant in technology which will enable the company become a global player in near future.

Stakeholders in KM

Tata Steel aims at capturing knowledge from various working groups and outside agencies who play a major role in day-to-day functioning. The major stakeholders covered under KM being:

Senior Management

Officers

Employees (Supervisors & Workmen)

Customers

Supplier

Experts (In & outside company)

Opportunity of knowledge transfer

Tata Steel’s knowledge management initiative is driven by its corporate KM group which attempts to cover all possible opportunities of knowledge generation in and outside the steel works. The primary sources being:

Day-to-day operation

Learning from failure

Published Papers by employees (National and International publications)

Task Force/Consultant/Technical Groups

Engineering Project

Knowledge Sharing across the value chain

Improvement Activities

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Instruments of Knowledge Transfer

Tata Steel follows three strategies for managing organizational knowledge (Fig 2). Knowledge can be contributed either by an individual (codification) or a team or a group of people (Personalization). The first two strategies enable capture and systematic storage of knowledge, whereas the third strategy (Knowledge Diffusion) derives the benefit of replicating best practices identified in the repository and thereby eliminating the ‘re-invention of wheel’.

The above strategies ensure knowledge sharing across the entire value chain from customer to the supplier. Some of the instruments through which the above strategies are deployed are:

		Knowledge Contribution by an individual (I): All contributions are first sent to a set of subject matter experts to check their relevance, correctness of information and  utility to the company before being available in portal for public usage.
		Ask Author (I): A user can put forth his/her queries to the author regarding any particular Knowledge Piece through this route.
		Ask Expert (I & II): A panel of experts is identified area-wise to answer queries of users from all corner of Tata Steel. This feature directs the query to the relevant expert and thus helps the questioner in seeking his answer. The queries also remain open for other users to attempt a reply.
		Knowledge Usage (III): Any employee can bring about intangible/tangible savings in related work areas by using an existing knowledge asset.
		Communities of Practice (II): To encourage knowledge sharing behavior in an informal manner, across the boundaries of departments and divisions, various Communities of Practice or Knowledge Communities are formed. Each knowledge community further consists of certain sub-communities which attempts to focus on smaller functional areas. The knowledge communities continuously look for new bench marks, identify gaps, set targets and strive to achieve them through experiments and best practice deployment. In the process, the new knowledge gathered is collected in the form of various K-Products, such as, Best Practice Identification, Trial of new products, Experiments and Best Practice deployment.
		Content Management (I): The knowledge repository of Tata Steel is not only huge in size, but also is rich in content - thanks to the contribution of more than 15,000 employees. However, constant effort is put in to keep the knowledge base current and contemporary. In order to do this, old knowledge pieces are archived and knowledge on similar subjects are distilled. In the process of knowledge distillation, members are encouraged to compile knowledge pieces available in related areas and hence prepare a consolidated one which will contain all relevant information at one place.
		Other activities of Knowledge Communities (II & III) : The diverse community structure requires knowledge sharing among the members to ensure proper knowledge diffusion. Hence communities organize inter and intra community meetings at regular intervals chaired by senior officials to discuss and share knowledge on aspects that affects both the parties. These communities also organize seminars by inviting well-known experts in various fields.
		Involving shop-floor employees in KM: A large number of employees in Tata Steel are deployed at the shop-floor. In a century old company, these employees really possess a wealth of knowledge. In order to capture the tacit knowledge from shop floor and to facilitate horizontal deployment of the same at all other locations, a new initiative named as Knowledge Manthan (means churning) has been started in 2004. Realizing the rich dividend from its Knowledge Manthan initiative the Knowledge management group has extended the idea of involving grass-root employees by launching yet another initiative named ‘MASS’ in the year 2005. Many of the ideas captured through Manthan are now being deployed through ‘MASS’.

KM Portal @ Tata Steel

On the corporate intranet a KM Portal has been developed to communicate all KM related matters across the company. It provides an online knowledge repository to the users who can submit, search and use knowledge pieces available on it. The portal also provides a virtual forum where employees can invite and involve other fellow employees or lead experts (specific to interested areas) to discuss and solve the problems faced by them. Relevant Indian and international standards, quality system manuals, standard practices and procedures also feature for ready reference of users.

Awards & Accolades

Tata Steel has won many laurels for its endeavour and initiatives towards creating a culture of managing knowledge. It was the winner of MAKE Asia award for the year 2003 and 2004 (finalist in the year 2002). In 2005, Tata Steel won the first MAKE India award. It has also earned a distinction among Indian companies to be selected twice as a best practice partner by American Productivity & Quality Center (APQC) for its KM process.

“Tata Steel has embarked aggressively on the journey of becoming Global Leader with customer driven excellence, integrity and ethical behavior in all our transactions. The rate of success in achieving and exceeding the global standards will be directly proportional to how fast we deploy our knowledge, that we have acquired over last 100 years in minerals’ and metal’s business, besides that from customers, partners and other stakeholders, to each unit and person of Tata Steel and thereby expanding the “pockets of excellence” to cover entire organization. In this endeavor knowledge management initiatives and the modest success that we have had over last few years instills us with confidence of achieving our aspirations.” – Amit Khanna, Head Knowledge Management, Tata Steel