KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT AT NORTHROP GRUMMAN CASE SCENARIO

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Knowledge management (denoted as KM) is a process used by organizations to capture, develop, share, and effectively use the organizational knowledge. It is a multidisciplinary approach aimed at achieving organizational objectives through best use of knowledge.Northrop Grumman (denoted as NG) is one organization that has found wide applications and far reaching implications in the implementation of the knowledge management. The case presented here if for NG that addresses the KM practices and other aspects in the organization. Presented herein will be the company’s current KM status, hoped achievements, and a gap analysis. As for the status of knowledge management at Northrop Grumman, there are several initiatives that have been put in place by the project manager, Scott Shaffar. The first initiative was the determination of the barriers to knowledge sharing, whereby he hires a Delphi group to conduct the survey. From the feedback he got from the audits, he was able then to implement a bigger KM project. There was instituted a 10-persom knowledge management team that was tasked with identification of the subject matter experts and capturing of the brain contents of these experts. The need arose here because the experts who had experience of more than 20 years were leaving the organization. The initiative went on with the creation of about 100 knowledge cells that included armaments, software engineering, and manufacturing. 200 subject matter experts were also identified within those cells after which the knowledge council turned its attention to knowledge capture. There are also initiatives that entailed the creation of websites for the various knowledge cells. The information pertaining to the knowledge experts was then logged in into an expert locator they called Xref (cross-reference). The employee could use the Xref to search for information in seveal ways, including by program affiliation, employee name, or skill. More so, the initiative of a database technology was perceived to have been a better approach only that the management did not want a ‘black hole’ approach. The company perceives the knowledge management as the continuity strategy for the company. Initially, the need for the knowledge management arose from the fear that the company might loose the knowledge with the retirement of experts. The only mechanism to avert this was the knowledge management initiatives. The employees also perceive the knowledge management as a tool to enhance productivity. The surveys conducted have shown various opinions of the employees, among them that they would have appreciated an environment that enhances sharing of information. According to Shaffar, the company had given itself a culture that was to be receptive to a formal knowledge management. This is an indication that the employees took it to be valuable mainly because of the fact that there were problems to be solved and the solutions lied with expert knowledge that needed to be accessed from the knowledge management tools in place. There are several achievements that the company hopes to get from the knowledge management. For one, the first objective of the company was to ensure that the company retained and developed the knowledge it had by tapping it from the experts before they could leave with it. The fears were that the company would loose its competitive to other companies, and the objective here was to ensure that the company retained and expanded its competitiveness. As an aviation company, loosing expertise would have been the biggest hit the company could ever get. Secondly, even with the expertise, the company still needed to develop, and the best way to develop is to harness knowledge that will lead to innovation. To be at the top, innovation was needed, and innovation cannot be possible with adequate knowledge or access to that knowledge. Another objective of the knowledge management was to create a culture that was receptive of knowledge management initiatives or practices. The project manager wanted a culture that would help to preserve the knowledge by tapping the brain power of the experts before they could leave, store that power that is in the form of knowledge and make it accessible to the current employees of the firm. There are various benefits that the company will gain from the knowledge management initiatives. These benefits are mostly aligned with the achievement of the program objectives. For example, the company will reserve the knowledge it has from its experts meaning that it will still continue in its quest for continuously improving its operations. The databases will also provide the necessary information needed by people from various fields to solve particular problems or even to develop something new. Sharing of knowledge among the workers in an organization is also a key success factor because making decisions requires one to be fully informed. The knowledge management is a process that will ensure just that, and the project managers will have a concrete base or foundation for sourcing their decision-making information. The key enabler in the knowledge management is the fact that the company has managed to acquire the necessary technology and funding to develop the knowledge management program. This is according to Shaffar, who says that he has developed a roadmap for getting the technologies and funds to facilitate the program. Another key enabler is the fact that the employees have shown cooperation, whereby majority of the employees have been participating in the surveys and other practices or activities conducted in the process of implementing and assessing the knowledge management program. The employees, as it has turned out, are indeed happy with the program because it will enable them to share information or acquire the desired information from a common repository. Some of the employees have lamented that their working environment could not allow for the sharing of knowledge, and they were now happy that the management is implementing the knowledge management program that will allow this. The key barrier to the success of the knowledge management program was that there still existed areas within the company where sharing was not happening. For a successful program, the sharing needed to happen across all areas. There are also gaps in the knowledge management in the Northrop Grumman because the current status is not the desired status. The current status still has areas where sharing is not taking place, while the desired status will have all areas participating in the sharing. Secondly, the surveys by the Delphi group indicated not all the employees participated in the surveys, and this could be an indication that not all were impressed with the idea of the knowledge management. Long term recommendation for GN include motivation practices that will ensure employees participated fully in the KM. Another long term recommendation would be contnous assessment to determine the success and flaws in the system. A recommendation that is midterm is development of systems that will integrate all areas of the organization to ensure sharing happens across the organization. A short term recommendation would be to assess the acceptability of the program among the employees, and then identify the best ways or methods that will find widest acceptance. The best way for an organization to effectively manage knowledge across the different geographic zones, and different types of experts is by developing systems that necessitate the interaction between the experts from the different zones. For example, the intranet is a good tool that can be used by an organization, where experts from the same zone and different zones will be required to give their inputs and to consult with the rest on various issues. The knowledge related to company innovations include technical and technological knowledge that is applied in the development of the craft. The company management is responsible for the creation, development and effective deployment of knowledge. This is because management makes policies that influence or dictate the operations of the company. The employees may be the ones posing challenges because of the unwillingness to accept change. Mechanisms that will enable individual learning, as well as organizational learning, is the establishment of a culture that lauds continuous learning. This can be done through training programs or motivating employees to undertake individual learning. Without such a culture or that motivation, there may be what is referred as ‘comfort zones’ in the organizations. The organization remember what they know mainly through the establishment experts throughout the ACS, and establishing communities of employees.
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