Merck & Co., Inc.’s Manufacturing Division (MMD) is committed to innovating so that we can bring life-saving and affordable medicines and vaccines to patients around the world. With 43 manufacturing plant sites worldwide, MMD manufactures and distributes critical vaccines, sterile products, biologics, and animal health products to more than 140 countries. Given the deeply technical and complex nature of our business, coupled with extensive knowledge and expertise of our employees, the Knowledge Management Center of Excellence (CoE) deploys tacit-knowledge specific tools & processes to identify, capture, transfer & share our key knowledge that is not yet written down.
Using the four tenants of Knowledge Management - People, Process, Content & Technology - we will demonstrate the application of tacit-knowledge specific Tools & Processes that provide opportunities to leverage and re-use our collective, deep knowledge and expertise across the company.
• People – Tacit Knowledge is unique, based on many individual factors (e.g., experiences, education, culture, etc.). Why should we capture someone's knowledge? How do we do it? When do we do it? How do we know what to capture? Our Retention of Critical Knowledge (ROCK) approach will answer all these questions! • Process – Our After Action Review process is a standard form of group reflection of a process or work activity where participants review what actually happened, and why it happened; comparing this with what was supposed to happen, what went well and what did not go well. Through reflection, we can identify learnings (lessons) and evaluate which lessons we want to apply to ensure we are improving the next iteration of that process/work activity. • Technology – Although technology is not the 'end game', it is a key enabler for capturing tacit knowledge. Through our Community of Practice structure, we use a virtual space for content as well as a discussion board feature. Based on a standard 'template' with a similar look & feel, we can illicit the wisdom of the crowd, collaboratively solve problems and create broader visibility to best practices.• Content – Content is the ultimate output for all of the ways we codify tacit knowledge. Our goal is to turn tacit knowledge into explicit knowledge, some examples include our ROCK Collections, Lessons Learned Library and CoP Discussion Boards
In this session, we will tell the story of how we are using KM Tools, Practices and Mindsets to prevent the loss of tacit knowledge, reduce time to competency and reduce our over-reliance on a single person or SME.
Learning Objectives:
Upon completion, participant will be able to to describe what tacit knowledge and the importance of capturing it.
Upon completion, participant will learn the process and techniques (KM Tools) for capturing tacit knowledge including how to identify, capture, transfer and share it.
Be able to identify where there are risks to tacit knowledge loss in their business and describe how to leverage KM to mitigate that risk.