Knowledge Management System

Knowledge Management System (KM System) refers to a (generally IT based) system for managing knowledge in organizations, supporting creation, capture, storage and dissemination of information. It can comprise a part (neither necessary or sufficient) of a Knowledge Management initiative.

The idea of a KM system is to enable employees to have ready access to the organization's based documented of facts, sources of information, and solutions. For example, an engineer could know the metallurgical composition of an alloy that reduces sound in gear systems. Sharing this information organization wide can lead to more effective engine design and it could also lead to ideas for new or improved equipment.

A KM system could be any of the following:
Document based i.e. any technology that permits creation/management/sharing of formatted documents such as Lotus Notes, web, distributed databases etc.

Ontology based: these are similar to document technologies in the sense that a system of terminologies (i.e. ontology) are used to summarize the document e.g. Author, Subj, Organization etc. as in DAML & other XML based ontologies

Based on AI technologies which use a customized representation scheme to represent the problem domain.

Provide network maps of the organisation showing the flow of communication between entities and individuals

Increasingly social computing tools are being deployed to provide a more organic approach to creation of a KM system.

Benefits of KM Systems
Some of the advantages claimed for KM systems are:
- Sharing of valuable organizational information.
- Can avoid re-inventing the wheel, reducing redundant work.
- May reduce training time for new employees
- Retention of Intellectual Property after the employee leaves if such knowledge can be codified.

This article was originally based on material from the Free On-line Dictionary of Computing, which is licensed under the GFDL.

- http://www.management.com.ua/strategy/str109.html
- Rosner, D.., Grote, B., Hartman, K, Hofling, B, Guericke, O. (1998) From natural language documents to sharable product knowledge: a knowledge engineering approach. in Borghoff Uwe M., and Pareschi, Remo (Eds.). Information technology for knowledge management. Springer Verlag, pp 35-51.
- Langton, N & Robbins, S. (2006). Organizational Behaviour (Fourth Canadian Edition). Toronto, Ontario: Pearson Prentice Hall.
- Maier, R (2007): Knowledge Management Systems: Information And Communication Technologies for Knowledge Management. 3rd edition, Berlin: Springer.
- Rhetorical Structure Theory (assumed from the reference of RST Theory above) http://acl.ldc.upenn.edu/W/W01/W01-1605.pdf
- The RST site at http://www.sfu.ca/rst/ run by Bill Mann