- 잡동사니/뉴스레터

2015년 4월 11일 (토)

단테, 2015. 4. 11. 09:44

글 / '문화'의 중요성         

- 오늘의 편지, 

    

  

    

Case study – Fluor Corporation

   

Developing KM

Fluor operates in a hugely complex business sector. It developed a knowledgemanagement strategy, including content management and communities of practice, to help its staff across the world to work together better.

By Rob Koene

FLUOR CORPORATION is one of the world’s largest publicly listed engineering, procurement, construction and maintenance (EPCM) services companies. It handles complex engineering and construction projects around the world in a range of sectors of heavy industry.

Fluor’s primary objective is to develop, execute and maintain capital projects on schedule, within budget, and to exacting standards of operational excellence. The individual and collective knowledge and expertise of our workforce of more than 35,000 is key to doing that in a timely manner.

Our workforce occupies a network of offices in more than 25 countries in six continents, and serves clients across a wide range of industries, including chemicals and petrochemicals, government, life sciences, oil and gas, manufacturing, mining, power and telecoms. The range of services span conceptual design through to detailed engineering and design, construction, project and program management, into operations and maintenance. 

  

Why knowledge management?

Fluor’s project-focused workforce represents a great opportunity for the company, but we needed to improve the way we use their knowledge. In the past, when projects ended teams were reconfigured and remobilised for new demands. Transfer of learning and experience was therefore limited to what every employee brought directly to each new project assignment.

For staff, that knowledge is the source of their own status and influence, and also how they are rewarded by and valued in the company. With projects worldwide, sharing knowledge globally is central to Fluor’s success. Increased competition requires us to perform more work overseas in places like India to remain competitive. 

The ability to share engineering services globally helps the company to maintain round-the-clock effort and to reduce time-to-market. The following elements were identified by Fluor as ‘beacons’ towards the goal of becoming a premier knowledge EPCM services company:

  • Provide a work environment to attract, retain, develop and motivate top quality, knowledgeable staff;
  • Identify, nurture, grow and apply the collective employee knowledge and expertise required to achieve business and strategic goals;
  • Leverage knowledge from global sources to produce and apply rapid innovations anywhere in the world;
  • Improve the company’s flexibility to rapidly shift resources, including expertise and knowledge, to help it make the most of cyclical markets and the global economy;
  • Learn more about clients, industries and markets and to increase capabilities to help clients find better solutions, apply technological advancements and meet changing market conditions;
  • Use and improve knowledge to refine corporate expertise worldwide in core competencies.

How we got started

Fluor began its knowledge management (KM) journey in 1999 to support its vision of being the premier global provider of knowledge-based EPCM services. We recognised that our staff formed the core of our knowledge-based services and that linking them better in meaningful communities would not only enable us to access and share their collective knowledge, but would ultimately improve customer service, too.

The company had been ‘managing knowledge’ for a long time and pockets of the organisation were leveraging and sharing what they knew within their discipline, or in one office, but this rarely happened on a global scale.

The new KM strategy, by contrast, was intended to help the company achieve its business objectives in an increasingly competitive global market by taking a broader, more universal approach to linking people, knowledge and solutions to the challenges they and the company face.

A small, centrally managed, KM team was established to develop the enabling technology, to identify methods of deployment in the Fluor community and to foster a pragmatic approach to the organisational change issues that are always involved in implementing a KM platform.

This organisation, composed entirely of Fluor employees, collaborated with consultants to help develop the vision, strategy, structure, competencies and work practices necessary to establish and sustain KM across the corporation, long-term. 

 

Technology deployment

Due to Fluor’s size and global presence, the team realised that technology would be essential – it could scarcely be done without it. But we also placed a strong emphasis on the importance of people and processes to derive business value.

To start, the Fluor KM team developed a tool that would enable the company to quickly form and facilitate technology-enabled knowledge communities to address critical customer and project execution issues.

In line with Fluor’s KM philosophy of simplicity, self-service and ease of use, the KM team developed a webbased system, called Knowledge onLine, based on proven technologies. The foundation is provided through integration of Lotus Domino from IBM with the Autonomy Ultraseek search engine.

A number of additional technologies were used to enable unique search and indexing features, instant messaging, reporting and secure remote access from any location over the internet.

Knowledge onLine links globally dispersed employees in communities of practice (CoP) to enable them to capture, share, improve and apply what they know in a secure environment.

These CoPs are groups of people who interact and share knowledge for any of the following reasons:

  • They work together toward a common result and need to share knowledge about the task at hand;
  • They work independently, but perform similar job functions and have an interest in sharing knowledge about how best to perform their job; or
  • They have an interest in the same information, even if they use the information for different purposes.

The organisational model of communities is key because it relies on natural social structures that motivate people to interact and share knowledge. The Fluor team identified a strategic portfolio of communities critical to business results in Engineering, Construction, Marketing, and their myriad business lines, including Life Sciences, Government, Mining and Infrastructure. Knowledge onLine supports the knowledge-sharing goals of these communities by providing:

  • Content management capability that allows rich, community-specific classification, while simultaneously making documents available for cross-community searches;
  • A consistent interface enabling members to collaborate, contribute and access knowledge regardless of their community, while allowing communities to configure the interface;
  • Ability to identify and associate experts with knowledge;
  • A flexible, advanced security protocol;
  • Stewardship to ensure that knowledge is accurate, fresh and applicable.

The rollout process for these communities was formulated to address organisational factors associated with KM, as well as implementation of the technical capability itself. Using a common community template design, the KM team can quickly configure and deploy community homespaces into our cross-functional and cross-businessline environment.

In our first year, we established more than 30 operational knowledge communities, bringing new awareness and exposure to our vast technical and human resources.

Fluor can now roll out communities on demand to meet immediate business needs. For example, Fluor deployed (and subsequently decommissioned after its use expired) a community to support SAP deployment using the Knowledge onLine infrastructure and deployment process.

It supports community knowledgecapture, discussion forums, searches, calendaring, subscription-based event notification, instant messaging, knowledge categorisation, knowledge searches, knowledge packaging, revision management and secure remote-access.

In addition, the system tracks profiles of individuals and experts worldwide to make it easier for them to be contacted. Today, this method of collaboration has truly changed the culture of the company and the way we do business. Fluor continues to invest in the development of Knowledge onLine to ensure that the technology used to support the KM program continues to be a world-class-competitive differentiator.

As KM has matured across the organisation, more work process improvements have been identified. Today, the communities provide a ‘one stop shop’ for work instructions, guidelines and examples, access to global experts and career path information and training. 

  

Key elements for success

Staff quickly realised the benefits of sharing knowledge when they, too, could connect for their own benefit. This led to a ‘grass roots’ movement within Fluor as the tools and methodologies caught on. That, in turn, was a key factor in cultural transformation and improving everyday work processes. Needless to say, we learned some important lessons:

An emphasis on people

Employees form the core of a knowledge-based services strategy. You must have enthusiastic people who are willing to ingrain knowledge-sharing behaviours into the company culture.

Strong functional communities

Our knowledge communities are based along functional and business lines. Many of the functional groups had existed for some time and had strong networks, with leadership in place. These leaders in turn became the knowledge community leadership. The enterprise-wide KM effort helped them coordinate their knowledge, experts and discussions in one accessible place.

Active and involved leadership

Community leadership has a direct influence on the strength of the community. Communities improve business performance through global adoption of best practices, improved work processes, reduced overhead and timely expert solutions. It is leadership that makes these improvements possible.

The use of technology to support the global community

KM strategy should emphasise people, but connecting them globally requires a robust platform. Create a ‘one stop shop’ to connect staff regardless of location or time differences. 

  

Benefits

Putting a figure on cost savings and the value to customers when they receive knowledge-based services is a challenge. It is even more difficult asknowledge-sharing becomes the norm and using KM is the only way to accomplish daily tasks. KM has brought the following benefits to Fluor and its customers.

Operational consistency

Fluor shares work among many offices. Knowledge onLine supports this by providing consistent practices, procedures and other aids to all locations. With a rapidly growing workforce, KM also helps bring new hires up to speed in shorter time.

Life-long learning

The demands of global competition require a workforce that is always learning. The collaboration and global access of Knowledge onLine means that staff can learn from the challenges co-workers are facing by reviewing the expert advice offered as a solution. Lessons learned and knowledge shared within the system means that all staff have access to best practices. 

 

Success stories

The value of sharing knowledge is best illustrated with success stories. They range from discovering that our in-house expert on Russian pressure vessel codes lives in Houston, Texas, to receiving a solution in just a day to a complex software problem that the vendor had been unable to solve for more than six weeks, to engineers working globally to save a client €1m on a clean-fuels project.

For example, a Fluor client was trying to stretch its 30-year-old control system for a power station for another 15-year service. The original vendor no longer existed and getting the system repaired was difficult. The Fluor site manager visited the control systems community forum and asked for advice.

The result came back within 24 hours from a contact at another client’s power station that was replacing the same type of control system with a more modern one. The second client was happy to sell the old equipment and also provided the details of the engineer who built and maintained the instruments. Through this capability, Fluor is seen as a strong facilitator of knowledge and expertise across the industry.

Another example: a Fluor office was trying to qualify for a chemical giant’s business. The client questioned the office’s level of experience with Fieldbus (a method for instrument and control wiring). During a break, an engineer searched Fluor’s knowledge communities for ‘Fieldbus’, found 30 ‘knowledge objects’ (including a list of Fluor’s global experience) and reported the results to the client. They were suitably impressed and the office qualified for the project.

We will continue to raise the level of KM performance by encouraging knowledge innovation, work-process improvement and strategic alignment of intellectual assets. The system will continue to evolve because new technology will enable dynamic matching of the task context with solutions that more closely reflect how people interact with experts. 

Fluor believes Knowledge onLine can support and accelerate the development of people into experts and better leverage their expertise. Fluor’s ability to access and share knowledge on a global, enterprise-wide, real-time basis provides us with many benefits.

Although the value is recognised internally and by clients, it’s clear there remains potential for even greater benefits. The company continually refines its KM strategy to align with current business goals. Success stories from all over the world are received daily and continue to demonstrate the power of people connecting globally.

There are many visible signs that our culture has changed and performance improved as the company continues its transformation. 

Rob Koene is knowledge manager of Fluor’s engineering, electrical & control systems communities of practice. He would like to thank Fluor’s knowledge managers, the Knowledge onLine support and development team and Fluor’s senior management for making this article a true team effort. Rob can be contacted at rob.koene@fluor.com

 

A typical, knowledge-rich day at Fluor

A typical day for an active member of Fluor’s Knowledge onLine solution would include the following activities:  

7:15 am

I come in, turn on my PC and get a coffee. The first thing I do is log-in to Knowledge onLine and access my community of practice to see if there is any news of interest.  

9:00 am

After a meeting with my project task-force, I check the community forum to see if there have been any comments to the question one of my team members posted requesting information on design parameters in Malaysia. I’m happy to see that a number have come in, some from people with direct experience to our situation. I call my team member to make sure she has seen the responses and to encourage her to contact some of the respondents. I add a comment to the thread thanking those who have been so helpful.

11:00 am

Before lunch, I submit a specification that I’ve recently created for my project. It has some interesting twists and enhancements on the controlled document in the community and I want to capture that for others to use. About half way through the submittal process, I receive a call from the client that requires immediate action. I hit the ‘draft’ button and save what I’ve done so far for later.

1:00 pm

After lunch, I begin my next design task, which is to design a monorail hoisting facility. I perform a search of Knowledge onLine to see what prior knowledge is available. Success. My search uncovers Fluor’s document on the design of hoisting facilities. It also yields some important comments to that document for special situations that are similar to the monorail I am designing.  

2:30 pm

After completing the preliminary analysis of the hoisting facility, I go to the ‘myspace’ location in Knowledge onLine, select ‘draft submissions’ and complete the process of submitting the specification I began before lunch.

4:00 pm

I receive a voice mail from an engineer in India, asking for information on cooling-tower basin design. I access his profile on the members section of the community and see that he is currently working on a project in Russia. He’s been with the company five years and spent most of that time in civil engineering. I find this background data useful as I describe the important aspects of his design issues.

4:55 pm

Just before going home, I check the community resources to see if I can access an external industry practice that I need to complete a task for tomorrow. I find the link I’m looking for. I print out the designated practice, logout of my computer and leave for the day.

 

Knowledge management at Fluor today

Knowledge onLine contains 42 knowledge communities and more than 15,000 members in more than 130 locations.

The following figures show the recent monthly usage by members:

Knowledge read - 111,000

Knowledge download - 8,000

Knowledge submit - 1,400

Forum read - 34,000

Forum submit - 900

Thanks to the efforts of Fluor’s knowledge leaders and community members, the company has been named a 2006 Global Most Admired Knowledge Enterprise (MAKE) Winner, the only company of its type to do so over the nine years the awards have been running. Other 2006 award winners include Toyota, Sony, Samsung, Honda, Unilever, Accenture, 3M and Buckman Labs.

 

         

* eimagazine.com, http://www.eimagazine.com/xq/asp/sid.0/articleid.2F806554-8C44-47DF-8BC8-40E528B026CD/eTitle.Case_study_Fluor_Corporation_/qx/display.htm 

                                                  

   

          
- 편집하는 말,   

  

'문화'를 건강하고 건전하게 가꾸는 일... 

사실은 가장 기초적/기본적인 가정으로부터 출발한다. 

그리고 또 학교, 또 직장과 사회로 확장이 가능한 얘기가 될 텐데... 

그 '문화'라는 것만큼 어려운 게 또 있을까? 사실상 모든 다른 것들의 총합. 

  

토요일이다, 주말 아침은 매번 늦잠을 자기 일쑤인데 모처럼 일찍 일어난 하루. 

오늘은 또 어디로 나들일를 향해볼까? 살짝 설레임을 갖는 기분... 

- 또 모르지, 이래놓고 예전처럼 또 방안을 뒹굴다 끝나버릴 수도, 

                                                

- 블로그의 글,     

- 인터넷의 글,     

- 그밖의 말들,   

* 글, http://blog.daum.net/dante21        


저작자표시 비영리 변경금지

'- 잡동사니 > 뉴스레터' 카테고리의 다른 글

2015년 4월 13일 (월)   (0) 2015.04.13
2015년 4월 12일 (일)   (0) 2015.04.12
2015년 4월 10일 (금)   (0) 2015.04.10
2015년 4월 9일 (목)   (0) 2015.04.09
2015년 4월 8일 (수)   (0) 2015.04.08

'- 잡동사니/뉴스레터'의 다른글

  • 현재글2015년 4월 11일 (토)

관련글

티스토리툴바