Group Decision and Negotiation 14: 131–145, 2005. DOI: 10.1007/s10726-005-2405-x
C Springer 2005 Improving the Decision Making Process in the Design Project by Capitalizing on Company’s Crucial Knowledge INES SAAD, CAMILLE ROSENTHAL-SABROUX AND MICHEL GRUNDSTEIN LAMSADE, University – Paris IX, Place du Maréchal de Lattre de Tassigny, 75775 Paris cedex 16 (E-mail: Saad@lamsade.dauphine.fr, Sabroux@lamsade.dauphine.fr, mgrundstein@mgconseil.fr) Abstract In this paper, we propose a method to locate the company’s crucial knowledge for improving the quality of decision making in a design project. It comprises of a preliminary survey regarding the approach that has been carried out at automotive company for identifying the crucial knowledge, aiming at choosing and justifying the necessary investment to capitalize on the knowledge. This method will then be used as basis for a dialogue between the stakeholders involved in the identification of the crucial knowledge developed and/or used in a design project. Key words: crucial knowledge, design process, decision-maker, knowledge management, knowledge mapping, multi-criteria decision aid, ordinal data 1. Introduction In the decision making process in a design project, the decision makers which are defined by (Bolloju et al. 2002) as “individuals responsible for solving problems for the purpose of attaining a goal or goals” combine different types of knowledge (tacit knowledge and explicit knowledge) available in various forms in the organization to select from a set of options, the alternative that is acceptable. The decision making process itself results in improved understanding of the problem and the process, and generates new knowledge. Capitalizing on the company’s knowledge in the context of decision making is increasingly being recognized in the industrial environment since the process of capitalizing which surfaces tacit knowledge (Nonaka and Takeuchi 1995), that is often not explicit, has been considered crucial for improving decisions and their resultant outcomes (Prusak 1997). As said by (Noh et al. 2000; Eisenhardt 1989) “tacit knowledge is quite beneficial to a faster decision making process”. Thus, companies must invest in engineering methods and tools in order to preserve the knowledge related to the decision making process in the design project. Such knowledge must be used by them to solve similar design problems. To minimize these investments, they must identify the so called “crucial knowledge”, that is, the most valuable knowledge to be preserved and utilized. In Section 2, we describe the context and the problem encountered at French automotive company. In Section 3, we briefly review the knowledge management process. In Section 4, we illustrate the complexity of the knowledge developed in a design process. In Section 5, 132 SAAD, ROSENTHAL-SABROUX AND GRUNDSTEIN we highlight the role of a designer as a decision maker in a design project. In Section 6, we introduce our proposed approach to identify the crucial knowledge. A conceptual model for developing knowledge map is presented in Section 7. Finally, we conclude with the perspectives of our research. 2. The Study Context In the automotive sector, capitalizing on the knowledge used in design process, that is, locating, preserving, enhancing value and maintaining this knowledge is very complex (Saad et al. 2002). It involves more and more heavy investments in order to convert unstructured tacit knowledge into explicit knowledge to be integrated in corporate memory defined as “explicit, disembodied, persistent representation of knowledge and information in an organization” (Van Heijst et al. 1996). The automotive company PSA Peugeot Citroen, use two different tools to preserve knowledge: – “Knowledge’s book” (Ermine 2003) to preserve knowledge used and produced in design project – The Knowledge-Based-System (KBS) to help human users in achieving tasks in application domains As the resources of the company are limited, the automotive company must define accurately the knowledge to be integrated in the design process’s corporate memory. In our case study, the goal is to propose a method to identify and qualify crucial knowledge in order to justify a situation where knowledge capitalization, specifically in the context of decision-making, is advisable. 3. What is Knowledge Management? We define Knowledge management as “the management of activities and processes that enhance creation and use of knowledge within an organization, aim at two strongly linked goals: a preservation goal and a sustainable innovation goal with economic, organizational, socio-cultural and technological underlying dimensions” (Grundstein et al. 2003). In fact, the knowledge management is a way to answer the problem of capitalizing on the company’s knowledge. This problem can be considered as a multi facet problem solving approach which is described by Grundstein as follows: Locate: this facet of the problem deals with the location of crucial knowledge, that is explicit knowledge and tacit knowledge (Polanyi 1966), which are necessary for decision-making process and for the progress of the essential processes that constitute the heart of the activities of the company. Preserve: this facet of the problem deals with the preservation of know-how and skills. When skills cannot be formalized, the “master-to-apprentice” behaviour has to be encouraged.