Knowledge Management in Safety-Critical Systems Analysis

This paper presents a framework based on the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) methodology to select the most appropriate set of Knowledge Management (KM) tools to support the innovation processes in organizations. The framework builds on the theoretical foundations underlying organizational KM to identify key KM processes enabling innovation. The AHP is a multi‐criteria decision support technique that can be used to analyse and compare those KM tools that best support innovation processes. Organizations can select the most suitable KM tool by using the proposed framework to identify gaps and overlaps in the extent to which the capabilities provided and utilized by their current KM tools portfolio meet the KM needs of the organization to sustain the innovation. The main contributions of this work are the list of KM processes to support an innovation activity and the hierarchy of importance of such processes able to support the selection process of a KM tool. The framework can be of use to managers and other practitioners because of its ease of implementation. An illustrative example of a case study for the application of the framework is provided. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to present a study of the understanding and usage of social networking sites (SNS) as a knowledge management (KM) tool in knowledge‐intensive enterprises.Design/methodology/approachIn terms of research approach, the study has taken an interpretitivist framework, using a higher education (HE) institution as the case‐study, which is characterised by the need to generate process, share and use knowledge on a daily basis in order to remain competitive. The case study was analysed using qualitative research methodology, composed of interviews and utilised narrative analysis as a means of data analysis, thus deriving a characterisation of understandings, perceptions and acceptance of SNS as a KM tool.FindingsThe study provides evidence that even in HE, where it is generally acknowledged that there is a need to adequately capture, store, share and disseminate knowledge, as this can lead to greater innovation, creativity and productivity, participants were suspicious of the nature of the technology and the fact that it could intertwine their professional and social life. As a result, they were not prepared to invest the relatively high effort required in employing SNS as a KM tool as they also have difficulty in establishing the added value. Consequently, in order to employ SNS for KM purposes cultural, behavioural and organisational issues need to be tackled before even considering technical issues.Originality/valueThe paper provides an insight into KM and social networking in HE. This also highlights issue for international HE.

The intranet has emerged as one of today's most effective tools for knowledge management. This article reports on the extent to which three South African academic libraries, selected by means of the purposive sampling method, utilise the intranet as a knowledge management tool. Based on the literature, knowledge management and an intranet are briefly defined. The advantages of the intranet as a knowledge management tool as well as the content of an intranet are discussed. The opinions about knowledge management and the utilisation of the intranet as a knowledge management tool in the three academic libraries are weighed up against the findings in the literature. It is clear that a strong awareness exists of the importance of knowledge management and the value of the intranet as a knowledge management tool. However, the potential of the intranet as a knowledge management tool is not utilised fully.

Defines Knowledge Management (KM) and explains its importance in both corporate business organizations and also in not for profit service organizations, including libraries, as a means of improving performance and to develop quality products and services. States that KM tools play an important role, and institutions use more than one KM tool in general for effective KM implementation. The objective of the study is to find out the use of different KM tools and their preferences in academic institutions / libraries in India. The study used Survey Method. Random Sampling method is used to collect the data from a sample of 50 university libraries comprising of central, state, private and deemed universities in India through questionnaire technique. The major findings of the study are: only 34.0% of the university libraries in India are implementing KM in their libraries. Internet, Intranet, Help Desk Technologies and Document management Systems are the preferred KM tools in the decreasing order of importance in the academic institutions. 'Communication and Messaging' is observed to be the most important purpose of use of KM tools in the universities or university libraries in India.

Knowledge management (KM) is the collection of processes governing the creation, storage, reuse, maintenance, dissemination and reuse of knowledge. KM refers to the collection of processes controlling the creation, storage and usage of experience in a particular situation or problem solving context. To transfer knowledge between experienced engineers, construction professionals have traditionally used techniques ranging from formal annual meetings to face-to-face interviews. Construction KM focuses on the acquisition and management of important issues and experience from participating engineers. To enhance the quality of KM gained by engineers involved in construction projects, this study proposes a knowledge flow approach integrated with mind mapping to achieving KM solutions in the construction industry. Combined with web-based technology and mind mapping, this study proposes a Construction Web Topic-based Knowledge Management (CWTKM) system enabling engineers to reuse domain knowledge and experience by dynamically exchanging and managing knowledge during the construction phase of a project. In the proposed CWTKM system, the topic-based experience exchange environment in the mind map enables engineers to illustrate and share their experience with other engineers effectively. Engineers are, thus, invited to exchange and share their knowledge based on their previous experience. By integrating web-based technology and mind mapping, engineers can obtain problem solutions and experience directly from senior engineers, decreasing the time and reducing the cost of on-the-job training. By exchanging and sharing previous experiences among engineers, similar and related experiences used to execute similar projects can clarify domain knowledge and enable the exchange of knowledge through web KM. The CWTKM system provides a web-based platform for users who can request assistance from selected or all engineers in the enterprise who have relevant experience. The user can also submit knowledge description using mind mapping in CWTKM system. Moreover, senior and junior engineers can effectively and easily exchange knowledge and experience regarding a specific aspect of their current construction project. In this study of a Taiwan construction building project, the survey (questionnaire) results indicated that the CWTKM system, integrated with mind mapping approach is effective for construction knowledge exchange and management.

A contingency perspective of knowledge management recognises the need for a fit between knowledge management solutions (KMS) and decision making contexts which they support. In order to determine the best fit, a field survey was carried out to investigate the impact of two different types of KMS (technical and social) on decision makers' behaviour and performance in different decision contexts (simple and complex). The results provide partial support for the contingency view. As expected, the study identified social KMS as the best fit for complex contexts, based on subjects' superior performance from comparable adoption of both KMS. In contrast, the study identified that both KMS were an equally good fit for simple contexts, based on similar levels of subjects' performance, but social KMS was preferred in terms of adoption. These findings contribute to much needed empirical evidence for research and provide useful guidance for practice. However, their limitations warrant further study.

The aim of this paper is to explore the use and applications of Knowledge Management (KM) for improving Library and Information Services (LIS) in Bangladesh. This paper seeks to address the following research questions: How KM can be used efficiently in the libraries of Bangladesh for the improvement of LIS performance? What KM tools and techniques are being used in the libraries of Bangladesh? What difficulties are faced by the information professionals for applying KM tools and techniques in the libraries of Bangladesh? What are likely to be the means or ways to overcome those difficulties? The methodology includes a combination of both quantitative and qualitative approaches. An in-depth interview method has been used to collect data using a semi-structured questionnaire consisting of open-ended and close-ended questions. The results of this study show that document management is the highly used KM tool used in the libraries of Bangladesh followed by intranet, telephones, instant messenger, groupware, digital warehouse, and web conferencing. Results also reveal that the use and application of KM in LIS supports improved access to information resources and services, enriched professional knowledge of information professionals, enhanced environment and culture of knowledge sharing, and changed work behaviour of information professionals. The study identifies that lack of awareness about KM, lack of skilled manpower, communication gap and lack of knowledge sharing, and lack of technological infrastructure are the main problems for the use and application of KM. Finally, this study suggests that creating awareness about KM, trained and skilled manpower, reducing communication gap and improved knowledge sharing, technological and knowledge infrastructure, and the use of KM system/tools are the possible ways to overcome the problems for the use and application of KM in the libraries of Bangladesh.

Purpose Knowledge management is a function of learning orientation, knowledge sharing, organizational memory and knowledge reuse. This paper aims to endeavor to explore a link between knowledge management and value creation which seem to be fragmented in the literature due to various conceptualizations and meanings. The study hypothesized a moderating role of social capital on the relationship between knowledge management and value creation. Design/methodology/approach The study was approached from the theoretical perspective. Study thoroughly reviews and analyzes the literature by developing a link between knowledge management and value creation. The studies were explored from selected databases including “Google scholar”, “Emerald” and “ProQuest” using the keyword search, namely, “Knowledge Sharing”, “Learning Orientation”, “Organizational Memory”, “Knowledge Re-use”, “Knowledge Management”, “Knowledge-based View”, “Competitive Advantage”, “Value Creation” and “Social Capital” to reduce the interpretation bias. Findings Knowledge management is an important predictor of value creation which can be strengthened by developing strong interpersonal relationships with all stakeholders. Organizations can create competitive advantage by managing social capital through knowledge management processes including learning orientation, knowledge sharing, organizational memory and knowledge reuse. Research limitations/implications The study is based on a theoretical model and an apparent limitation is the non-existence here of contributions and discussions that have been based on empirical data. Future study may use other moderating and mediating variables such as industry type, market orientation, human capital and organizational climate to know whether knowledge management directly affects the value creation or indirectly through these variables. The hypotheses emerged from the model can be operationalized by generating the items from the review of the literature. Originality/value The study contributes to the knowledge management literature by developing a theoretical model of knowledge management based on underlying dimensions of learning orientation, knowledge sharing, organizational memory and knowledge re-use.

Role of knowledge management and knowledge reuse has been investigated analytically in higher educational environment using Nonaka & Takeuchi and Harsh models. It has been observed that in three dimensional environment knowledge management and reuse together play key role for students and faculty both if these could be appropriately exploited. A comprehensive system can be built which can benefit both students and faculty in wider areas of their respective knowledge management. Special benefits of knowledge reuse may be seen if we could treat knowledge reusability as an independent quantity along with explicit and tacit knowledge. Current model reveals analytically that knowledge reusability may boost the operative knowledge in an educational organization and may have its sovereign reality. Present work may be also helpful to manage knowledge during software reuse and associated actions.

An increasingly large number of safety-critical embedded systems rely on software to prevent and mitigate hazards occurring due to design errors and unexpected interactions of the system with its users and the environment. Implementing a safety instrumented function in the way advocated by the traditional software methods requires an intimate understanding and thorough validation of a complex ecosystem of programming languages, compilers, operating systems and hardware. We propose to consider an alternative where a system designer, for each individual problem, creates in a correct-by-construction manner both the design of a system and its compilation and execution infrastructure. This permits an uninterrupted chain of a formal correctness argument spanning from formalised requirements all the way to the gate-level characterisation of an execution environment. The past decade of advances in verification technology turned the mechanical verification of large-scale models into a reality while the pressure of certification makes the cost of a formally verified development routine increasingly acceptable. The proposal fits the Grand Challenge for Computer Research posed by Hoare in 2003, namely, development of a Verifying Compiler which not only mechanically translates a given program from one language to another but also verifies its correctness according to a formal specification. This allows meeting the most stringent software certification requirements such as SIL 4. We illustrate the vision with a small case-study developed using the Event-B modelling notation and tools.

Designing safety critical systems is a complex task due to the need of guaranteeing that the resulting model can cope with all the functional and non-functional requirements of the system. Obtaining such guarantees is only possible with the use of model verification techniques. This paper presents an approach aimed to fulfill the needs of critical system design. The proposed approach is based on the Architecture Analysis and Design Language (AADL), which is suitable to describe the system's architecture. A sequence of model transformations facilitates the verification of the designed AADL model and so assures its correctness. It must be highlighted that this is not performed in a single step, as it is possible to verify AADL models with different abstraction levels, which allows successive refinements in a top-down approach.

In the "Internet Plus" era, teachers use Internet platforms and tools for knowledge management. The Internet has triggered 'knowledge explosion'. This phenomenon has brought a series of challenges to knowledge management, such as information overload, knowledge fragmentation, knowledge inertia and so on. In view of the above challenges, we should adopt the strategies, such as, establishing a knowledge database for teachers, giving offline knowledge management media a networked label information, creating a network atmosphere for knowledge sharing, and building a networked knowledge management environment, so as to promote the healthy development of "Internet plus education".

This paper describes knowledge management (KM) concept, its tools and techniques for accessing the right knowledge at the right time. KM tools are very important to successfully achieve the goal of any organisation with the help of KM. Selection of KM technologies is very critical job. If the organisation is not framing the right KM framework using the available KM technologies, it will fail to make right decisions. The article aims to generate awareness about the KM tools and techniques for organisations.

Ethernet is an evolving standard, not a static one. It's a family of frame-based networking technologies and communication services offering different communication capabilities and quality of service to distributed applications. Ethernet is becoming more present in critical embedded systems because of the supporting software and hardware ecosystem, and guaranteed growth path supported by different industries. Ethernet is a mature technology developed for best-effort communication in high-volume and consumer applications, but its properties have imposed limitations on design of fault-tolerant, time-critical, safety-critical and mission-critical systems. As Ethernet services are continuously evolving to cover different applications, modified variants of Ethernet and additional services have been developed to allow its use in low-latency, lossless application in data centers, as well as in embedded critical applications. This paper provides an overview and comparison of existing and ongoing Ethernet developments for design of time-, mission-, and safety-critical systems. It discusses the capabilities of different Ethernet QoS protocol services (among others IEEE AVB/DCB, ARINC 664, TTEthernet/SAE AS6802, and various Real-Time Ethernet modifications) and their applicability in critical embedded systems.

Knowledge Management (KM) governance is the implementation of authority through a framework to ensure the delivery of anticipated or predicted benefits of KM strategy development and implementation in an authorized and regulated manner. KM governance also relies on measurement and evaluation of the effectiveness and efficiency of all aspects of KM, particularly the outcomes of strategy implementation to ensure that strategic benefits are realized. This paper examines the results of a global survey of people involved in the development and implementation of KM strategies. Responses came from 34 countries across every continent. Using descriptive and inferential statistics, this paper finds clear evidence of the measurability of KM outcomes through KM governance. These research findings strengthen the proposition that KM governance supports the capacity of KM governance to realize and reveal the value from, or the return on investment (ROI) of KM strategy development and implementation; the selection of KM tools and techniques is less of a consideration in this regard.