Integrating tacit knowledge in product lifecycle management: a holistic view of the innovation process

Abstract

Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) aims to increase the reuse of work outputs of the design, development, sales and support of a product in order to reduce time to launch and to facilitate the creation of a product that is more suited to clients’ needs. Organizations aiming to benefit from PLM equally need to maintain or increase innovation levels. PLM implementation should therefore not be detrimental to the innovation potential of an organization. PLM requires the integration of tacit knowledge, the different ways of thinking that coexist in the organization. The need to integrate tacit knowledge comes from the fact that most practices are poorly documented or not documented at all. In addition, connections between departments before the implementation of the PLM paradigm are mostly informal. Previous initiatives of integration of tacit knowledge in PLM have focused on individual tacit knowledge and the conversion of tacit to explicit knowledge. Theorists and practitioners agree on the need to include individual employees’ expertise and vision in PLM. However, multiple perspectives and needs that are different but equally valid make it challenging for the Knowledge Management (KM) or Information Technology (IT) expert to prioritize them or to create a balanced approach on their own. Although the need for integration of tacit knowledge has been argued in the PLM field, no research has explored in depth the nature of tacit knowledge, the challenges concerning its management, its relationship to innovation, data management and the design of information systems and the relationship of these issues with PLM. This research explores a Knowledge Management (KM) framework, the Intellectual Capital Model (ICM). It expands this framework to clearly consider creativity and innovation. The framework is used to reveal the multifaceted nature of tacit knowledge, its relationship with language and the importance of social interaction for its validation and application. An empirical exploration complements the theoretical one. Tacit knowledge integration requires identification techniques and representation tools. These techniques and tools must be informative without burdening the design process. Classifications have long been used as tools to make sense of knowledge domains. As a consequence, ontologies are more and more frequent in organizational environments. Ontologies have also been acknowledged as important tools to connect departments through PLM systems. Therefore, it would be desirable that the results of tacit knowledge techniques and tools of identification and representation are absorbed by ontologies. Knowledge domains other than PLM have developed techniques and tools to integrate tacit knowledge. Among those techniques, the focus group allows participants to share context and find consensus. Among those tools, concept maps allow groups to represent context in a conceptual level. A concept map may also function as the graphical representation of an ontology. This research explores the potential of concept maps as a representation tool and their collaborative creation as a technique to identify tacit knowledge in an PLM environment.

Date	4 Jan 2022
Original language	American English
Awarding Institution	École de technologie supérieure
Supervisor	Mickaël Gardoni (Supervisor) & Kimiz Dalkir (Co-supervisor)