A Vision Of Knowledge Management In Engineering And Technology

By John G. Voeller, P.E.

There are many visions of the future that are assembled by individuals and groups to help vector our current efforts and learning toward highest value for the future. Such visions are often sequential or consequential extrapolations of current events and are often just step-wise walks from now to tomorrow with few massive disruptions or destruction. Few are integrated with other outside peripheral or collateral perspectives and therefore tend to be a bit narcissistic. Engineering visions in the past have suffered from this. What follows is a very narrow, but strongly integrated vision of a significant disruption building in engineering and technology application occupations that should be considered carefully by companies and individuals planning to do business in the next decade.

There are nearly as many occupations in the world as there are people if one looks deep enough. However, there is a general class of human endeavor that cuts across many occupations with many of its basic requirements remaining the same. This class involves those efforts where some portion of human knowledge about how the world and things work are applied accurately and predictably to satisfy human requirements. Unlike the great scientific efforts of past centuries that uncovered the mysteries of physics, chemistry, biology, etc., some make their living repeatedly applying this documented knowledge to sets of problems they often have seen before. Engineers and technical people in many fields are among the strongest practitioners of such efforts.

Engineers Have Been Using Two Forms of Knowledge

For as long as man has been applying knowledge gathered, assembled and codified by others, those with training in fields such as engineering have been leveraging an anomaly of time. They have been using knowledge which comes in two forms. First is the textbook knowledge of complex subjects such as the calculus, physics, aerodynamics, heat transfer, etc. Anyone with the desire and interest and a reasonable IQ could learn these and we graduate another sixty thousand plus each year with these proclivities just in the US. The second form of knowledge involves the unique experiential and situational knowledge that they have assembled over the years from solving problems, revisiting situations and finding patterns and short-cuts.

The first kind of knowledge is massive in scope and volume and does change over time. However, millions of people and thousands of groups devote time to keeping this form of knowledge documented and structured by discipline and type. The second kind of knowledge is less likely to be regimented in any of the manner and volume of the first. It tends to be found between ears or documented in places only a few would ever know to look.

The first form of knowledge tends to be self-contained and often found in close proximity to the assumptions, rules, limits and other constraints about how it can be used and when. The second form of knowledge tends to be anecdotal or summary and if documented at all, it is done so on the presumption that the only user will be the author.

In the many processes where these two forms of knowledge could be applied, the former required a library and people to search. Today, it requires access to the internet and the ability to find quality information and knowledge as well as governing assumptions to ensure application is appropriate. In the latter form, one must know who knows what and how well to access and recover it, which is a skill now expanded to drawing such knowledge from strangers on the Web we may never meet. It is this last trait common to both forms that should have told us all something.

In any human endeavor where the primary value is delivered by the repeated application of documented or accessible knowledge which has already been organized and related, access and the ability to interpret it is a diminishing value proposition. Said another way, with the massive assembly of knowledge building on the Web around the world and with the equally massive number of different interpretations of that knowledge available from different sources, what constitutes the future value proposition of engineering and technical providers?

A Striking Example of Information Storage

Taken one step further, IBM Almaden Research Labs recently showed the operating prototype of a mass storage device that would store all the information in the Library of Congress four times over in a space the size of a sugar cube. Such a device makes not only the textbook knowledge, but the codified experiential knowledge available and portable to anyone.

Even in the area of the more-difficult-to-capture second form of knowledge, other researchers are nearing completion of an n-dimensional hyperlinking environment that is dynamic and approximates the human brain cortex. In this environment, the gathering and codification of multi-constraint lessons and processes becomes possible and will become commonplace.

Given these circumstances, one must consider where the value proposition lies in the future of engineering and technical activities. Such advances in storage, organization and presentation of information and knowledge will force new value propositions to be developed by providers and appreciated by recipients. However, this is only the beginning and another industry has shown us what that implies.

An Example from Industry

For as long as it has existed, the automotive industry has competed for the attentions of the world and driven ideas such as branding to incredible heights. Within this for most of its history, has been an intense level of competition that made engineers and business people alike believe that in order to be the best, they must do everything. Of course, engineers love this perspective because it means maximum opportunity to design great new things while doing the repeatable mundane things at lower and lower cost. The result was constant price increases for the consumer, yet equally constant reductions in margin for the builder. As computers became inherent in their processes, much of the role of the engineer became commoditized with price and speed being the sole metrics. The result was a lifeless decade of cars without hearts or muscle or attraction.

A few years ago, some began to see the tragic end of this spiral if a new value proposition could not be found. They challenged the basic premise of "doing it all". They began by recognizing that each firm did not have to own one of every million dollar machine tool. The unheard of began to occur as the norm as BMW rented time on the Mercedes $12 million twenty-station, six-axis machining center. Lincoln began to buy their Navigator engines from Mercedes. And the most recent, BMW's new Mini will soon have a diesel option, a diesel designed and built by Toyota.

What these firms have begun to learn is the power of leveraging not just other firm's physical assets, but also other firm's knowledge. BMW does not make diesels for any purpose, so there is no reason to develop the knowledge and skills in design, manufacturing and dozens of other areas just to be able to slap their name on it. They see a future where they will have the ability to bring great new designs to market sooner and even attempt delivery of cars customized for a buyer down to matching eye color or body in a favorite shape. We have already begun to see a renaissance in car making with exciting new styles and models coming at almost breakneck speed to the market.

They will do this by knowing who can do what, when and how well anywhere in the world, and be able to bring that to bear on demand. Engineers of all kinds must imagine this lesson carefully regardless of what industry they serve. But there is one final piece to this puzzle.

Developing Repositories of Knowledge

If companies can consider this form of open utilization of best knowledge regardless of source, the next step is to consider national or international subject matter repositories of knowledge. Imagine if the finest minds in the world contributed best practice to a national repository on transportation knowledge or water resource management or any other complex technical arena, what sort of efficiency, quality, speed, innovation, etc. would ensue. If a country did this for their industries, consider what advantage they would have on the world stage!

Perhaps even more importantly, what would this free up as far as time for engineers and their like to consider more important questions instead of dealing with the mundane repetition. What issues involving innovation, safety, environmental and other concerns would we have time to proactively address. From purely a cost standpoint, would we use our new-found time to make things better or would we simply realize we did not need to have nearly so many engineers in our direct employ? An interesting question.

This vision requires many things to align and many barriers to be relaxed before it arrives in all parts of engineering. However, skeptics should consider two facts. First, the use of this idea in engineering is not new; it is an intrinsic part of the chip fabrication industry. As far as countries deciding on this as an advantage, look to software engineering in India. They not only have focused on this with many of the same principles of this vision, but they also may have taken the intellectual property they were building for others and placed it in a national repository for all to share in a formidable knowledge bank.

Engineering as an industry and engineers as individuals must imagine such a tomorrow and critically analyze what they will do to participate in it. It will be painful for some and easier for others, but this vision is inevitable for all; only its arrival date is in question.

About the Author: John G. Voeller, P.E., is Senior Vice President, Chief Knowledge Officer, and Chief Technology Officer of Black & Veatch, an international engineering firm. Mr. Voeller can be reached at voellerjg@bv.com.

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©  Copyright 2007, The Construction Sciences Research Foundation, Inc.  Updated January 12, 2007.