WWW-enabled knowledge management for distributed engineering projects

This paper address problems related to distributed engineering projects (DEP) and how World Wide Web (WWW)-based technologies can improve projects' efficiency and success rate. The focus is on how WWW can improve project organisations to manage their knowledge, be it in the form of documents, formal communication or the tacit aspect of human interaction. In order to study the research hypotheses related to improved efficiency and leaner organisations resulting from networked operations, a layered framework is presented on organisational processes taking place in the distributed project business. This framework is applied to two industrial cases harnessing advanced networking technologies in their distributed operations. The cases have been picked to show diversity, the other one describes a global delivery process of complex investment goods and the other a smaller scale knowledge intensive company with rapid product release cycles. Basing on these cases the paper concludes that deploying advanced WWW-technologies to distributed engineering processes their punctuality, cost control and workflow can be improved. The cases indicate also, that the new tools enable the initiation of learning processes based on the quantitative information that accumulates in the network servers during the execution of the project. This information can be used to refine the organisation and focus the processes on the truly value-adding activities, which all support the research hypotheses set for the study.

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