The General Motors Variation-Reduction Adviser: An Example of Grassroots Knowledge Management Development

  • Authors:
  • Alexander P. Morgan;John A. Cafeo;Diane I. Gibbons;Ronald M. Lesperance;Gülcin H. Sengir;Andrea M. Simon

  • Affiliations:
  • -;-;-;-;-;-

  • Venue:
  • PAKM '02 Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Practical Aspects of Knowledge Management
  • Year:
  • 2002

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Abstract

One approach to developing knowledge management systems is to seed the system in key communities of practice and then encourage its customization and spread throughout the enterprise by local ("grassroots") initiative. This has the benefit of worker buy-in and adaptation of the local systems to their workflows. The concept is that, in exchange for some loss of control and standardization, the grassroots systems will be used and appreciated and will grow into an enterprise-wide system. In this paper, we discuss this approach and how it is emerging in General Motors' Variation-Reduction Adviser, a manufacturing knowledge-sharing and lessons-learned system.