Nestle, Pella and Volkswagen

Nestle, Pella and Volkswagen’s common issue is the lack of knowledge sharing between internal business units.  They all have a common goal.  All three wanted to have one set of common processes throughout their organizations, with the belief that all employees, customers, and suppliers could have access to the same information.  They all similarly share a vision to leverage technology to integrate information and processes to be more responsive to a rapidly changing supplier environment.  All three companies wanted implementation of new technology systems to streamline workflow giving employees easy access to information in order to focus on higher value tasks.  They wanted a software system (ERP) that had the ability to share knowledge and information easily; this would enable everyone to be working from the same system and would speed up all processes.  They wanted a system that would be transparent and at the same time to help them be more efficient and competitive within their markets.  A common issue in all three organizations is that they had grown out of the systems that help built their enterprises; however they were now dealing with a global economy and the need to have a system where information was easily stored and viewed as necessary in order to stay completive in their markets.  Customer demands were now more demanding, where the need for many combinations and variety of their products had to be available and ready to deliver at very short lead times.  In order to do this, the ERP systems had to be able to track all orders from order entry to delivery to the customer.  At the same time, inventories had to be maintained, production schedules had to be accurate and business processes needed had to be foolproof.  

Each of these companies requires a knowledge management system so that they can implement all of the changes that they want to do.  But to do it in a way that will maximize knowledge shared through out the company in an efficient way.  Document exchange among employees is a highly effective and efficient way for sharing codified knowledge while tactic knowledge will have to be transferred through conversations about employees and managers.   Each company in order to grow will need to create and acquire new knowledge and will have to find ways to share that knowledge throughout the corporate network to succeed.  As stated above to be more competitive in the market place and to move forward a knowledge management system will have to be put in place.  By implementing a knowledge management system each company will be able to evaluate the steps that need to be taken in order to implement the changes that are required and be able to follow the steps to improve overall performances of the managers, employees, information technologies and the knowledge captured.  

Knowledge management is an information system to help in the assisting and integration of knowledge.  There will be a number of challenges that each company will have to plough through in order to achieve a successful knowledge management system.  These include, culture, knowledge evaluation, knowledge processing and knowledge implementation.  All of these companies are similar in nature but will all require their own procedures and plan put in place to help achieve a knowledge management system that will work best for their particular company.  Of course there are also many pros to having a knowledge management system.  These include, every person within the organization will have access to management and business knowledge, new technologies are supported more easily and new knowledge can be captured for future use, improved staff engagement and communications across the company, and also helps in better measurements and accountability.

Each company took a different approach on implementing their knowledge system. Pella already had a good system in place but it was taking too much time and money to maintain it,  they implemented an Oracle system to assist them in “seeing everything going on at the same time”  The implementations were done in stages, starting with the financial systems and then supply chain applications.  The ability to implement in stages help reduce the chaos throughout the company and the benefits were seen slowly.  Pella wants to create visibility and achieve interplant synchronization to create better scheduling, higher labour productivity and lower inventories.  Pella’s manufacturing plants operate very efficiently but as silos.  The new technology software will provide visibility; improve the speed and quality of information by replacing disparate legacy systems with an integrated platform.  The more they can reduce manufacturing time the more time they have to distribute the product and be competitive with local suppliers.

Nestle had multiple purchasing systems and no formal processes of tracking ice cream flavours, orders or volumes.  None of the groups that were going to be directly affected by the new processes and systems were represented on the key stakeholder’s team.  In its haste to unify the company’s separate brands, the project team had replaced divisional silos with process silos.  Nestle focused on installing software but did not focus on changing business processes and achieving universal buy in.  Nestle learned the hard way that en enterprise wide rollout involves much more then simply installing software.  

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