Effective Management of Practitioners’ Knowledge-Development of a System for Quality Tool Selection

Abstract

The paper presents the stages in the development of a computer system for quality tool selection (with DSS characteristics) for the purpose of process improvement in production companies. The basic premise adopted in the development of the system was to acquire and save (store) in a system the knowledge of practitioners from this area in order to use the knowledge repeatedly, e.g. during staff training. A gap in knowledge was noticed in this respect. According to practitioners, the purpose of using quality tools given in the literature should be more precise in terms of the time in the production process when a given tool may be used, and the type of problem that may be solved with the tool. Specific information on these issues was gathered through a survey conducted among managers. All actions taken within this research study illustrate the key processes of knowledge management proposed in [1].