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html INTRODUCTION At various stages of civilization over the past five thousand years, successions of factors have formed bottlenecks on the efficiency of human beings, threatening to repress the growth of civilization. Upto the end of 1800s, limits on amount of available arable land caused problems as populations were growing and there were more mouths to feed. Then as large-scale manufacturing came into existence, urban labours became the most valuable asset. Following technological breakthroughs, machinery came into picture of production and it began to improve the automation and industry had no longer to depend on labors to that extent. But due to investment in machinery, capital became all-important. Controlling flow of capital was foremost problem for the industrialists at that time and suddenly capital became the bottleneck to efficiency. While traditional three factors of production Land, Labour and Capital have become easier to handle, in 21st century, a fourth factor is increasingly and fast becoming a hurdle or bottleneck for companies to grow. This is "Knowledge", which is at the heart of much of todays global economy and managing knowledge has become vital for companies success. KNOWLEDGE Knowledge can be defined as a fluid mix of experience, values, contextual information and expert insight that provides a framework for evaluating and incorporating new experiences and information. Knowledge is information in action. Knowledge is what people in an organization know about their customers, products, processes, mistakes, and successes. Unlike the conventional Material assets, which decrease as they are used, Knowledge asset increases with use; Ideas breed new ideas, and shared knowledge stays with the giver while it enriches the receiver.

Types of Knowledge

Explicit knowledge: It is the visible knowledge available in the form of letters, reports, memos, literatures, etc. Explicit knowledge can be embedded in objects, rules, systems, methods etc.

Tacit knowledge: It is highly invisible and confined in the mind of a person. It is hard to formalize and therefore, difficult to communicate to others. A master craftsman after years of experience develops a wealth of expertise at his fingertips. But he is often unable to articulate the scientific or technical principle behind what he knows. Transformation of knowledge from tacit to explicit form increases its usability and visibility. Capturing the experts Tacit Knowledge that resides within him in the form of know-how and insights is a very difficult and challenging task. While tacit and explicit type of knowledge is only a way to dissect the field, in reality the situation is more complicated. The above two categories are so heavily interlinked that such a bipolar map is not easy to draw in practice. For example, to understand completely a written document i.e. explicit knowledge, it often requires a significant amount of experience i.e. tacit knowledge. A sophisticated recipe is meaningless to someone who has never stood in kitchen or a diagram of machines is indecipherable without an engineering background. The Essence of Knowledge Management Knowledge Management is a process that, continuously and systematically, transfers knowledge from individuals and teams, who generate them, to the brain of the organisation for the benefit of the entire organisation. It is the systematic, explicit, and deliberate building, renewal, and application of knowledge to maximize an enterprise's knowledge-related effectiveness and returns from its knowledge assets.

The central theme of Knowledge Management is to leverage and reuse knowledge resources that already exist in the organization so that people will seek out best practices rather than reinvent the wheel. Few other ways to define KM are, Capturing, storing, retrieving and distributing tangible Knowledge Assets such as copyrights, patents and licenses. Gathering, organizing and disseminating intangible knowledge, such as professional know how and expertise, individual insight and experience, creative solutions and the like, brands, technology. Creating an interactive learning environment where people readily transfer and share what they know, internalize it and apply it to create new knowledge. Knowledge Management has always existed in one form or another. Examples include on-thejob peer discussions, formal apprenticeship, discussion forums, corporate libraries, professional training and mentoring programs. However, with computers becoming more widespread in the second half of the 20th century, specific adaptations of technology such as knowledge bases, expert systems, and knowledge repositories have been introduced to further enhance the process. The emergence of Knowledge Management has also generated new roles and responsibilities in organisations, an early example of which was the Chief Knowledge Officer. In recent years, Personal knowledge management (PKM) practice has arisen in which individuals apply KM practice to themselves, their roles and their career development.

How to Manage Knowledge Karl Wiig described three "pillars" for knowledge management: survey and categorize knowledge; appraise and evaluate value of knowledge; and synthesize knowledge related activities. Recent work from the University of Amsterdam increased this to four, focusing on the activities of conceptualising, reflecting, specifying and reviewing. Knowledge management covers the following:

identifying what knowledge assets a company possesses Where is the knowledge asset? What does it contain? What is its use? What form is it in? How accessible is it? analysing how the knowledge can add value What are the opportunities for using the knowledge asset? What would be the effect of its use? What are the current obstacles to its use? What would be its increased value to the company? specifying what actions are necessary to achieve better usability & added value How to plan the actions to use the knowledge asset? How to enact actions? How to monitor actions? reviewing the use of the knowledge to ensure added value Did the use of it produce the desired added value? How can the knowledge asset be maintained for this use? Did the use create new opportunities?

Key concepts in Knowledge Management Dimensions of knowledge A key distinction made by the majority of knowledge management practitioners is Nonaka's reformulation of Polanyi's distinction between tacit and explicit knowledge. The former is often subconscious, internalized, and the individual may or may not be aware of what he or she knows and how he or she accomplishes particular results. At the opposite end of the spectrum is conscious or explicit knowledge -- knowledge that the individual holds explicitly and consciously in mental focus, and may communicate to others. In the popular form of the distinction, tacit knowledge is what is in our heads, and explicit knowledge is what we have codified. Nonaka and Takeuchi (1995) argued that a successful KM program needs, on the one hand, to convert internalized tacit knowledge into explicit codified knowledge in order to share it, but, on the other hand, it also must permit individuals and groups to internalize and make personally meaningful codified knowledge they have retrieved from the KM system. The focus upon codification and management of explicit knowledge has allowed knowledge management practitioners to appropriate prior work in information management, leading to the frequent accusation that knowledge management is simply a repackaged form of information management. [3]

Critics have argued that Nonaka and Takeuchi's distinction between tacit and explicit knowledge is oversimplified and that the notion of explicit knowledge is self-contradictory. Specifically, for knowledge to be made explicit, it must be translated into information (i.e., symbols outside of our heads). Another common framework for categorizing the dimensions of knowledge discriminates between embedded knowledge as knowledge which has been incorporated into an artifact of some type (for example an information system may have knowledge embedded into its design); and embodied knowledge as representing knowledge as a learned capability of the bodys nervous, chemical, and sensory systems. These two dimensions, while frequently used, are not universally accepted. It is also common to distinguish between the creation of "new knowledge" (i.e., innovation) vs. the transfer of "established knowledge" within a group, organization, or community. Collaborative environments such as communities of practice or the use of social computing tools can be used for both creation and transfer. Knowledge access stages Knowledge may be accessed at three stages: before, during, or after knowledge-related activities. Some people would argue that there is a life cycle to knowledge use. Starting with capture or creation, moving on to use and reuse with the ultimate goal of enriching an organisation's capability. In counter to this many would state that such a life cycle view is too linear in nature and reflects an information centric view. For example, individuals undertaking a new project for an organization might access information resources to identify lessons learned for similar projects, access relevant information again during the project implementation to seek advice on issues encountered, and access relevant information afterwards for advice on after-project actions and review activities. Knowledge management practitioners offer systems, repositories, and corporate processes to encourage and formalize these activities with varying degrees of success. Similarly, knowledge may be accessed before the project implementation, for example as the project team learns lessons during the initial project analysis. Similarly, lessons learned during the project operation may be recorded, and after-action reviews may lead to further insights and lessons being recorded for future access. Note: In this context recording knowledge relates only to those aspects of knowledge which can be codified as text, or drawings. Different organizations have tried various knowledge capture incentives, including making content submission mandatory and incorporating rewards into performance measurement plans. There is considerable controversy over whether incentives work or not in this field and no firm consensus has emerged.

Adhoc knowledge access One alternative strategy to encoding knowledge into and retrieving knowledge from a knowledge repository such as a database, is for individuals to make knowledge requests of subject matter experts on an adhoc basis. A key benefit claimed for this strategy is that the response from the expert individual is rich in content and contextualized to the particular problem being addressed and personalized to the particular person or people addressing it. The downside of this strategy is that it is tied to the availability and memory recall skill of specific individuals in the organization. It does not capture their insights and experience for future use should they leave or become unavailable, and also does not help in the case when particular technical issues or problems previously faced change with time to the point where a new synthesis is required, the experts' memories being out of date. The emergence of narrative approaches to knowledge management attempts to provide a bridge between the formal and the adhoc, by allowing knowledge to be held in the form of stories. Categorization of knowledge management approaches The term "knowledge management" is now in widespread use, having appeared in the titles of many new books about knowledge management as a business strategy, as well as in articles in many business publications, including The Wall Street Journal. There are, of course, many ways to slice up the multi-faceted world of knowledge management. However, its often useful to categorize them. In a posting to the Knowledge Management Forum, Karl-Erik Sveiby identified two "tracks" of knowledge management:
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Management of Information. To researchers in this track, according to Sveiby, " knowledge = Objects that can be identified and handled in information systems." Management of People. For researchers and practitioners in this field, knowledge consists of " processes, a complex set of dynamic skills, know-how, etc., that is constantly changing."

Sveibys characterization is on target, but it may not capture the full flavor of the important distinctions in approaches to organizational knowledge management. We have adopted a three-part categorization: (1) mechanistic approaches, (2) cultural/behavioristic approaches, and (3) systematic approaches to knowledge management. Mechanistic approaches to knowledge management Mechanistic approaches to knowledge management are characterized by the application of technology and resources to do more of the same better. The main assumptions of the mechanistic approach include:

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Better accessibility to information is a key, including enhanced methods of access and reuse of documents (hypertext linking, databases, full-text search, etc.) Networking technology in general (especially intranets), and groupware in particular, will be key solutions. In general, technology and sheer volume of information will make it work.

Such approaches are relatively easy to implement for corporate "political" reasons, because the technologies and techniques although sometimes advanced in particular areas are familiar and easily understood. There is a small amount of good sense here, because enhanced access to corporate intellectual assets is vital. But its simply not clear whether access itself will have a substantial impact on business performance, especially as mountains of new information are placed on line. Unless the knowledge management approach incorporates methods of leveraging cumulative experience, the net result may not be positive, and the impact of implementation may be no more measurable than in traditional paper models. Cultural/behavioristic approaches to knowledge management Cultural/behavioristic approaches, with substantial roots in process re-engineering and change management, tend to view the "knowledge problem" as a management issue. Technology though ultimately essential for managing explicit knowledge resources is not the solution. These approaches tend to focus more on innovation and creativity than on leveraging existing explicit resources or making working knowledge explicit. Assumptions of cultural/behavioristic approaches often include:
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Organizational behaviors and culture need to be changed dramatically. In our information-intensive environments, organizations become dysfunctional relative to business objectives. Organizational behaviors and culture can be changed, but traditional technology and methods of attempting to solve the "knowledge problem" have reached their limits of effectiveness. A "holistic" view is required. Theories of behavior of large-scale systems are often invoked. Its the processes that matter, not the technology. Nothing happens or changes unless a manager makes it happen.

The cultural factors affecting organizational change have almost certainly been undervalued, and cultural/behavioristic implementations have shown some benefits. But the cause-effect relationship between cultural strategy and business benefits is not clear, because the "Hawthorne Effect" may come into play, and because we still cant make dependable predictions about systems as complex as knowledge-based business organizations. Positive results achieved by cultural/behavioristic strategies may not be

sustainable, measurable, cumulative, or replicable and employees thoroughly "Dilbertized" by yet another management strategy may roll their eyes. Time will tell. a Systematic approaches to knowledge management Systematic approaches to knowledge management retain the traditional faith in rational analysis of the knowledge problem: the problem can be solved, but new thinking of many kinds is required. Some basic assumptions:
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Its sustainable results that matter, not the processes or technology or your definition of "knowledge." A resource cannot be managed unless it is modeled, and many aspects of the organizations knowledge can be modeled as an explicit resource. Solutions can be found in a variety of disciplines and technologies, and traditional methods of analysis can be used to re-examine the nature of knowledge work and to solve the knowledge problem. Cultural issues are important, but they too must be evaluated systematically. Employees may or may not have to be "changed," but policies and work practices must certainly be changed, and technology can be applied successfully to business knowledge problems themselves. Knowledge management has an important management component, but it is not an activity or discipline that belongs exclusively to managers.

Unrepentant rationalists in the business world are taking a systematic approach to solving the "knowledge problem." Systematic approaches show the most promise for positive cumulative impact, measurability, and sustainability. Why is Knowledge Management Important The success of businesses in the 1990's in an increasingly competitive marketplace depends critically on the quality of knowledge which those organizations apply to their key business processes. For example the supply chain depends on knowledge of diverse areas including raw materials, planning, manufacturing and distribution. Likewise product development requires knowledge of consumer requirements, new science, new technology, marketing etc. The challenge of deploying the knowledge assets of an organisation to create competitive advantage becomes more crucial as:
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The marketplace is increasingly competitive and the rate of innovation is rising, so that knowledge must evolve and be assimilated at an ever faster rate. Corporations are organising their businesses to be focused on creating customer value. Staff functions are being reduced as are management structures. There is a

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need to replace the informal knowledge management of the staff function with formal methods in customer aligned business processes. Competitive pressures are reducing the size of the workforce which holds this knowledge. Knowledge takes time to experience and acquire. Employees have less and less time for this. There are trends for employees to retire earlier and for increasing mobility, leading to loss of knowledge. There is a need to manage increasing complexity as small operating companies are trans-national sourcing operations. A change in strategic direction may result in the loss of knowledge in a specific area. A subsequent reversal in policy may then lead to a renewed requirement for this knowledge, but the employees with that knowledge may no longer be there.

Business strategies related to knowledge management We can detect connections of knowledge management with several well-known management strategies, practices, and business issues, including
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Change management Best practices Risk management Benchmarking

There is a common thread among these and many other recent business strategies: A recognition that information and knowledge are corporate assets, and that businesses need strategies, policies, and tools to manage those assets. The need to manage knowledge seems obvious, and discussions of intellectual capital have proliferated, but few businesses have acted on that understanding. Where companies have taken action and a growing number are doing so implementations of "knowledge management" may range from technology-driven methods of accessing, controlling, and delivering information to massive efforts to change corporate culture. Opinions about the paths, methods, and even the objectives of knowledge management abound. Some efforts focus on enhancing creativity creating new knowledge value while other programs emphasize leveraging existing knowledge. Why is Knowledge Management Difficult There are many problems associated with finding out these knowledge assets and being able to use them in an efficient and cost-effective manner. Enterprises need:

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to have an enterprise-wide vocabulary to ensure that the knowledge is correctly understood; to be able to identify, model and explicitly represent their knowledge; to share and re-use their knowledge among differing applications for various types of users, this implies being able to share existing knowledge sources and also future ones.

Knowledge engineering methods and tools have come a long way towards addressing the USE of a company's knowledge assets, They provide disciplined approaches to designing and building knowledge-based applications. There are tools to support the capture, modelling, validation, verification and maintenance of the knowledge in these applications. However these tools do not extend to supporting the processes for managing corporate knowledge. However, we believe that the knowledge modelling techniques that exist to support the use of the knowledge, along with traditional physical assets management techniques, provide a starting point to manage fully the knowledge assets within a company. Drivers of Knowledge Management There are a number of claims as to the "drivers", or motivations, leading organizations to undertake a knowledge management program. Popular business objectives include gaining competitive advantage within the industry and increasing organizational effectiveness with improved or faster learning and new knowledge creation. As knowledge management programs can often lead to greater innovation, better customer experiences, consistency in good practices, knowledge access across a global organization, and other organizational benefits, many knowledge management programs will usually set some of these as end objectives as well. Some typical considerations driving a Knowledge Management program include: Making available increased knowledge content in the development and provision of products and services Achieving shorter new product development cycles Facilitating and managing organizational innovation and learning Leveraging the expertise of people across the organization Increasing network connectivity between employees and external groups with the objective of improving information flow Managing the proliferation of data and information in complex business environments and allowing employees to access appropriate information sources Managing intellectual capital and intellectual assets in the workforce such as the expertise and know-how possessed by key individuals as individuals retire and new workers are hired Knowledge Management Technologies

The early Knowledge Management technologies were online corporate yellow pages (expertise locators) and document management systems. Combined with the early development of collaborative technologies, KM technologies expanded in the mid 1990s. Subsequently it followed developments in technology in use in Information Management. In particular the use of semantic technologies for search and retrieval and the development of knowledge management specific tools such as those for communities of practice. More recently social computing tools such as blogs and wikis have developed to provide a more unstructured, self-governing approach to the transfer, capture and creation of knowledge through the development of new forms of community, network or matrix. However, such tools for the most part are still based on text and code, and thus represent explicit knowledge transfer. These tools face challenges in distilling meaningful re-usable knowledge and intelligible information and ensuring that their content is transmissible through diverse channels, platforms and forums. Knowledge mapping is commonly used to cover functions such as a knowledge audit (discovering what knowledge exists at the start of a knowledge management project), a network survey (Mapping the relationships between communities involved in knowledge creation and sharing) and creating a map of the relationship of knowledge assets to core business process. Although frequently carried out at the start of a Knowledge Management programme, it is not a necessary pre-condition or confined to start up.

Knowledge Management enablers Historically, there have been a number of technologies 'enabling' or facilitating knowledge management practices in the organization, including expert systems, knowledge bases, various types of Information Management, software help desk tools, document management systems and other IT systems supporting organizational knowledge flows. The advent of the Internet brought with it further enabling technologies, including e-learning, web conferencing, collaborative software, content management systems, corporate 'Yellow pages' directories, email lists, wikis, blogs, and other technologies. Each enabling technology can expand the level of inquiry available to an employee, while providing a platform to achieve specific goals or actions. The practice of KM will continue to evolve with the growth of collaboration applications, visual tools and other technologies. Since its adoption by the mainstream population and business community, the Internet has led to an increase in creative collaboration, learning and research, e-commerce, and instant information. Organisational enablers for knowledge management programs include Communities of Practice, Networks of Practice, before- after- and during- action reviews, peer assists, information taxonomies, coaching and mentoring, and so on.

Roadblocks to adoption of knowledge management solutions There have been many roadblocks to adoption of formal knowledge management activities. In general, managing knowledge has been perceived as an unmanageable kind of problem an implicitly human, individual activity that was intractable with traditional management methods and technology. We tend to treat the activities of knowledge work as necessary, but ill-defined, costs of human resources, and we treat the explicit manifestations of knowledge work as forms of publishing as byproducts of "real" work. As a result, the metrics associated with knowledge resources and our ability to manage those resources in meaningful ways have not become part of business infrastructure. But it isnt necessary to throw up ones hands in despair. We do know a lot about how people learn. We know more and more about how organizations develop and use knowledge. The body of literature about managing intellectual capital is growing. We have new insights and solutions from a variety of domains and disciplines that can be applied to making knowledge work manageable and measurable. And computer technology itself a cause of the problem can provide new tools to make it all work. We dont need another "paradigm shift", but we do have to accept that the nature of business itself has changed, in at least two important ways: 1. Knowledge work is fundamentally different in character from physical labor. 2. The knowledge worker is almost completely immersed in a computing environment. This new reality dramatically alters the methods by which we must manage, learn, represent knowledge, interact, solve problems, and act. You cant solve the problems of Information Age business or gain a competitive advantage simply by throwing more information and people at the problems. And you cant solve knowledge-based problems with approaches borrowed from the product-oriented, print-based economy. Those solutions are reactive and inappropriate. Applying technology blindly to knowledge-related business problems is a mistake, too, but the computerized business environment provides opportunities and new methods for representing "knowledge" and leveraging its value. Its not an issue of finding the right computer interface although that would help, too. We simply have not defined in a rigorous, clear, widely accepted way the fundamental characteristics of "knowledge" in the computing environment. Knowledge Asset Management

Enterprises are realising how important it is to ``know what they know'' and be able to make maximum use of the knowledge. This is their corporate knowledge asset. These knowledge assets reside in many different places such as: databases, knowledge bases, filing cabinets and peoples' heads and are distributed right across the enterprise. All too often one part of an enterprise repeats work of another part simply because it is impossible to keep track of, and make use of, knowledge in other parts. Enterprises need to know:
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what their corporate knowledge assets are; how to manage and make use of these assets to get maximum return.

Most traditional company policies and controls focus on the tangible assets of the company and leave unmanaged their important knowledge assets.

Knowledge Management Reasons of Failure or Success No established evidence attests to the reasons behind failure and success of Knowledge Management initiatives in organizations. Some argue that a failure to sustain investment is one factor, but it can equally be argued that if knowledge management delivered on its promises investment would continue. As with many management initiatives, particularly those with a heavy IT basis as can be the case with Knowledge Management, frequent questions are raised about the level of consultation necessary before a program is started; these questions are linked to issues of cultural change and a willingness to share and collaborate with colleagues. There is no evidence that Knowledge Management, in all these respects, is any different from other management initiatives.

Accessing Information is not Acquiring Knowledge It used to be traditional to blame bad decisions with lack of foresight and risk adverse leadership. Both reasons have at their core a lack of information that cumulatively led to the bad decision being taken in the first place. But with the advent of advanced computing power, and the networking enabled by the Internet, this reason, of lack of information, no longer holds water. The information is there, collected in sometimes repetitive, overlapping cycles. The issue is therefore no longer a lack of it, but more of accessing and finding the right info at the right time - to be delivered to the right target. The challenge is to match an information need with an appropriate resource. This challenge focuses our attention on two key aspects are:

(1) Accessing information - covering the technology dimension. How do we ensure that a decision-maker, in need of information to choose between alternatives and take a decision, is provided that info? How can the information be provided? The question is one of technology how can a decision-maker access information quickly and efficiently? (2) Finding information - covering the management dimension. With the advent of the Internet comes a new expression - information overload - of an overwhelming volume of information being delivered without sufficient disseminative justification. How can information be managed better - packaged better - to facilitate effective decision-making? Is a 200-page folder detailing the entire activity necessary to take a decision to initiate it for the deicision-maker? Or is a onepager with a bulleted list giving the salient points sufficient? Knowledge is a construct that is created in the mind of the user, as a result of the cycle of accessing, processing and understanding information. But providing and ensuring access to information per se will not complete the knowledge cycle. Quite clearly, it is the opportunity for value adding to information given to the user, which leads to generation of knowledge and understanding. Thus along with the provision of access to information, lies the need to create a two-way flow of opportunities to generate knowledge. On one hand are value-adding opportunities for the user to contribute experiences, insights and related information to the information being accessed. On the other are opportunities to contextualize and localize the information being accessed to the environment within which the user works. It is this value-adding, interactive give-and-take that leads to the generation of real knowledge.

Tata Steel decided to embark on formal KM initiative in the year 1999. The beginning was made in July99 to place a Knowledge Management (KM) programme for the company to systematically & formally share and transfer learning concepts, best practices and other implicit knowledge. The emphasis on knowledge management was clearly demonstrated in 1999 while coining the vision statement of the

company which read Tata Steel enters the new millennium with the confidence of learning and knowledge based organization.. Then followed the new vision statement, co-created by the employees in 2001 (Fig. 1) which again identified Manage Knowledge as one of the main pillars in strategy to become EVA+ by 2007. This clearly indicated the thrust Senior Management wanted on an initiative like KM. The essence of Knowledge management is to capture the available abundant knowledge assets either in form of tacit (experience, learning from failure, thumb rules, etc.) or explicit (literature, reports, failure analysis etc.), to organize and transform the captured knowledge, and to facilitate its usage at right place and at the right time. Phases of Knowledge Management Starting from a small sapling in 1999, the KM system of Tata Steel underwent a lot of improvements, and changes. In the process, it passed through many learning phases to reach its current state. The various phases of KM spiral at Tata Steel are shown in Fig 2. In its latest phase, the Knowledge Management has been identified as one of the main enablers to make Tata Steel self reliant in technology which will enable the company become a global player in near future.

Stakeholders in KM

Tata Steel aims at capturing knowledge from various working groups and outside agencies who play a major role in day-to-day functioning. The major stakeholders covered under KM being: Senior Management Officers Employees (Supervisors & Workmen) Customers Supplier Experts (In & outside company)

Opportunity of knowledge transfer Tata Steels knowledge management initiative is driven by its corporate KM group which attempts to cover all possible opportunities of knowledge generation in and outside the steel works. The primary sources being: Day-to-day operation Learning from failure Published Papers by employees (National and International publications) Task Force/Consultant/Technical Groups Engineering Project Knowledge Sharing across the value chain Tata Steel defines its value chain as a connected series of internal and external organizations, resources, and knowledge streams involved in creation and delivery of value to end customers. It includes the organizations suppliers and customers. In fact, one of the

organizations strategic goals is to develop value-creating partnerships with customers and suppliers. Tata Steel developed two programs in particular to help manage knowledge across its value chain: the customer value management (CVM) program and its supplier value management (SVM) program. Improvement Activities Knowledge generated through Suggestions, Small Group Activity,etc

Instruments of Knowledge Transfer Tata Steel follows three strategies for managing organizational knowledge (Fig 2). Knowledge can be contributed either by an individual (codification) or a team or a group of people (Personalization). The first two strategies enable capture and systematic storage of knowledge, whereas the third strategy (Knowledge Diffusion) derives the benefit of replicating best practices identified in the repository and thereby eliminating the re-invention of wheel.

The above strategies ensure knowledge sharing across the entire value chain from customer to the supplier. Some of the instruments through which the above strategies are deployed are: Knowledge Contribution by an individual (I): All contributions are first sent to a set of subject matter experts to check their relevance, correctness of information and utility to the company before being available in portal for public usage.

Ask Author (I): A user can put forth his/her queries to the author regarding any particular Knowledge Piece through this route. Ask Expert (I & II): A panel of experts is identified area-wise to answer queries of users from all corner of Tata Steel. This feature directs the query to the relevant expert and thus helps the questioner in seeking his answer. The queries also remain open for other users to attempt a reply. Knowledge Usage (III): Any employee can bring about intangible/tangible savings in related work areas by using an existing knowledge asset.

Communities of Practice (II): To encourage knowledge sharing behavior in an informal manner, across the boundaries of departments and divisions, various Communities of Practice or Knowledge Communities are formed. Each knowledge community further consists of certain subcommunities which attempts to focus on smaller functional areas. The knowledge communities continuously look for new bench marks, identify gaps, set targets and strive to achieve them through experiments and best practice deployment. In the process, the new knowledge gathered is collected in the form of various K-Products, such as, Best Practice Identification, Trial of new products, Experiments and Best Practice deployment. Content Management (I): The knowledge repository of Tata Steel is not only huge in size, but also is rich in content - thanks to the contribution of more than 15,000 employees. However, constant effort is put in to keep the knowledge base current and contemporary. In order to do this, old knowledge pieces are archived and knowledge on similar subjects are distilled. In the process of knowledge distillation, members are encouraged to compile knowledge pieces available in related areas and hence prepare a consolidated one which will contain all relevant information at one place. Other activities of Knowledge Communities (II & III) : The diverse community structure requires knowledge sharing among the members to ensure proper knowledge diffusion. Hence communities organize inter and intra community meetings at regular intervals

chaired by senior officials to discuss and share knowledge on aspects that affects both the parties. These communities also organize seminars by inviting well-known experts in various fields. Involving shop-floor employees in KM: A large number of employees in Tata Steel are deployed at the shop-floor. In a century old company, these employees really possess a wealth of knowledge. In order to capture the tacit knowledge from shop floor and to facilitate horizontal deployment of the same at all other locations, a new initiative named as Knowledge Manthan (means churning) has been started in 2004. Realizing the rich dividend from its Knowledge Manthan initiative the Knowledge management group has extended the idea of involving grass-root employees by launching yet another initiative named MASS in the year 2005. Many of the ideas captured through Manthan are now being deployed through MASS. KM Portal @ Tata Steel

the corporate intranet a KM Portal has been developed to communicat e all KM related matters across the company. It provides an online knowledge repository to the users who can submit, search and use knowledge pieces available on it. The portal also provides a virtual forum where employees can invite and involve other fellow employees or lead experts (specific to interested areas) to discuss and solve the problems faced by them. Relevant Indian and international standards, quality system manuals, standard practices and procedures also feature for ready reference of users. Awards & Accolades Tata Steel has won many laurels for its endeavor and initiatives towards creating a culture of managing knowledge. It was the winner of MAKE Asia award for the year 2003 and 2004 (finalist in the year 2002). In 2005, Tata Steel won the first MAKE India award. It has also earned a distinction among Indian companies to be selected twice as a best practice partner by American Productivity & Quality Center (APQC) for its KM process.

On

Tata Steel has embarked aggressively on the journey of becoming Global Leader with customer driven excellence, integrity and ethical behavior in all our transactions. The rate of success in achieving and exceeding the global standards will be directly proportional to how fast we deploy our knowledge, that we have acquired over last 100 years in minerals and metals business, besides that from customers, partners and other stakeholders, to each unit and person of Tata Steel and thereby expanding the pockets of excellence to cover entire organization. In this endeavor knowledge management initiatives and the modest success that we have had over last few years instills us with confidence of achieving our aspirations. Amit Khanna, Head Knowledge Management, Tata Steel

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Tata Steel ranked as no.1 in 2006 Indian MAKE Survey

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2. Tata Group recognized as one of the 2006 Global Most Admired Knowledge Enterprises (MAKE) 3. Tata Steel is selected as a Best Practice Partner by APQC Second Time for KM

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4. An International Symposium on Knowledge Management was organised at Jamshedpur on December 6-7, 2005 5. Thrust on usage of knowledge assets through MASS

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6. Tata Steel winner of the first Indian MAKE Award, 2005 7. Launch of Knowledge Debate; a mode of knowledge transfer 8. TATA STEEL Launches Knowledge Manthan 9. TATA STEEL Wins MAKE ASIA 2004 AWARD Practice Partner in Knowledge Management Tata Steel is the Best Tata Steel - Asian

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10. Tata Steel wins the MAKE ASIA 2003 Award MAKE Finalist

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