Ford has developed a robust best practices replication (BPR) process to share knowledge across its global operations. The BPR process involves identifying and approving proven best practices, communicating them to relevant teams, and tracking adoptions and value. Over 10,000 practices have been replicated annually, creating over $1.5 billion in identified savings. Key aspects of Ford's knowledge management include communities of practice, expertise locators, and content management with a central repository. Senior leadership support and a culture of knowledge sharing have been important to the success of Ford's knowledge management activities.

1. Knowledge Management at
Ford Motors
GROUP NO.-3
NEHA
(215112093)
ANU
(215112028)
EDWIN
(215112056)
AMITESH (215112094)

2. Agenda

Ford Profile, Comments

History

Ford Motors and KM Activities

Principles and Process of BPR

Results

Strategies

Conclusion

3. Ford Profile

Ranked #4 by Fortune 500

2012 Revenues -- US$134.3 billion

2001 Global Unit Vehicle Sales – 7 million

354,000 Employees

4. Overview Comments

Ford has many Knowledge Sharing Processes: Enterprise Portals,
Document Repository, GIS, e-Books, Best Practice Replication(BPR)…

Write, Search, and Read access to BPR is limited to Ford Employees,
with valid ID and who have received proper training.

Detailed BPR Process is considered confidential information.

5. Achieved Vision

Robust business process for the collection and approval
of high value practices that can be shared and
implemented throughout the enterprise.

Establish Collaborative Capabilities and build people
relationships by sharing valuable knowledge.

Technology to enable nimble and intuitive
communication of knowledge.

6. History

Jun ’95: Informal process of faxing practices amongst
vehicle operations.

Jun ’96: Launched BPR across vehicle operations – 53
plants globally.

Feb ’00: Derivative of process for Health and Safety for
communicating concerns and incidents. Developed and
Launched BPR version 2.0

Dec ’00: Derivative of the process for Environmental
application.

7. History (Contd.)

Feb ’01: Adapted
process for replicating key findings of
6-Sigma projects.

Aug ’96 – Present: Launched
53 Communities of Practice:
Product Development, Ford Land, HR, Quality, Service,
Finance, MP&L, Ford Production System, Recruiting, Plant
IT, Paint, Final Area, Body, Machining, Facilities
Engineering, Engine Design….

8. Ford Motors and KM
Activity Overview

TRANSFER OF BEST PRACTICES:

EXPERTISE LOCATOR SYSTEM

DECISION SUPPORT SYSTEMS

LESSONS LEARNED

CONTENT MANAGEMENT

AFTER-ACTION REVIEWS

9. TRANSFER OF BEST PRACTICES:

is a push process with defined roles and responsibilities.

communities share proven practices that have made
an improvement to a business process, not ideas.

practices are shared through picture sheets, video
clips, and documentation.

The key to success was measuring the value of the
knowledge transfer and the resulting replications.

10. EXPERTISE LOCATOR SYSTEM

Each major organization has lists of experts, usually
accessible from their home page.

Depending on the organization, some do have details about
the person’s experiences and expertise.

This is especially prevalent in the research and product
development organizations.

The enterprise “People Search” is a common directory of
every employee with e-mail access.

This directory does describe the job functions.

11. DECISION SUPPORT SYSTEMS

Each major organization in ford has its own derivatives
designed to suit their business needs.

Each are funded and maintained by the respective IT
support for that organization.

Six Sigma includes some refined decision support systems
as tools to aid Black Belts in analyzing data and suggesting
where to focus Six Sigma efforts.

12. LESSONS LEARNED

A lessons learned repository was created in 1997 at Ford with the
intent of allowing anyone to submit or retrieve a lesson learned.

“lesson learned” was not clearly defined, nor was there any
governance as to the submissions.

The lessons learned database was deactivated in 2001.

Currently, “powertrain” operations has developed expanding a
process called the preventive corrective action system, where a
lesson learned is defined as “a corrective action that has been
effectively closed, can be replicated, and is fed back into (ford’s)
quality operating systems to ensure permanent change.”

13. CONTENT MANAGEMENT

A lack of content is one reason that duplication of effort or mistakes
happen.

At Ford, content management is a well-defined process for any
documentation that is ultimately searchable on its intranet.

A strict governance and review process guides anyone who needs to
post to the central repository, or enterprise knowledge base.

There is a charge associated with the posting that in effect funds the
enterprise knowledge base content management process.

The cost varies with the volume of activity.

14. AFTER-ACTION REVIEWS

After-Action Reviews are routinely held during the course of any
major project.

For example, the product development function uses the Ford
product development system with milestone at key timing dates.

The decision to advance to the next milestone requires reflection
concerning if the goals have been met and what went well or
what went wrong.

. If necessary, lessons learned during this process are brought
back into the operating system to ensure change.

15. Recent Trends regarding KM

16. Principles
 Capture
only proven, high value practices.
 The
process improvement must contibute a
well defined business value.
 The
process improvement must be replicable.
 There
are specific roles and responsibilities.

17. Process:

Identify and submit a new best practice.

Review of the submissions.

Replication.

Managing the process.

18. Selection and Replication of Proven
Practices at Ford
SOURCES OF
IDEAS
Task
6-Sigma
Lessons
Learned
Site
Visits
CPIPS
FPS
8D’s
Dreams
Nightmares
IMPLEMENTATION
PROVEN VALUED PRACTICES
BEST PRACTICE REPLICATION PROCESS
WITH PRESCRIBED ROLES & RESPONSIBILITIES
COLLECT
APPROVE &
DISTRIBUTE
LOCAL REVIEW
FEEDBACK
MANAGEMENT
REVIEW OF
RESULTS

19. Create & Capture Knowledge:
BPR Steps 1-3
# 1: Draft Practice: Focal Point at a Location enters Proven
Practices into BPR.
# 2: Review Draft Practice: Gatekeeper reviews Draft Practices
for clarity and completeness. Collaborates with Subject Matter
Experts.
# 3: Approved Practice: Gatekeeper approves only High-Value
Proven Practices.

20. Communicate & Leverage Knowledge:
BPR Steps 4-6
# 4: Automatic email notification of Approved Practices to all the
Community Focal Points at each Location.
# 5: Practices reviewed by team members at each location to
determine applicability.
# 6: Adopt/ Not Adopt Decision : At each location Leadership
decides priorities of applicable practices. “Copy with Pride”

21. Manage and Recognize:
BPR Steps 7-9
# 7: Feedback: At each location, Focal Point provides
feedback to the System - adoption decision and value of
the adoption.
# 8: Reports: Location Summary Report, Community
Summary Report, etc., available to any Ford Employee.
# 9: Recognition of both the Best Practice Creator as well as the
Replicator – Placards.

22. Results Summary


10,000+ replications/yr.
2800+ active high value practices have resulted in:
 $1.5+ Billion of identified value
 $1 Billion of actual value added to the company
 Saved more then $ 600 million in past three years.

53 Communities of Practice launched with 2115 Focal Points.

Health & Safety and Environmental derivatives of the process
proactively distribute incidents and corrective actions.

Patents have been applied for the software and process derivatives.

Process licensed to Shell Oil, Nabisco, and Kraft Foods.

23. Community of Practices

24. KM Portals

Enterprise Knowledge Base (EKB) : strict
governance & taxonomy

Document repository of 1 million documents

Prime intent – source of information regarding the
activities in org.

Sub- portals

Highly customizable

25. TGRW

Things gone right/wrong-files.

TGR capture information about events that facilitate task
accomplishment.

TGW captures information about events that stand in
way of task accomplishment.

26. Strategies for Successful
Knowledge Sharing at Ford motors
# 10: Tell stories, with sufficient details.
# 9: Establish a process for filtering out trivial, low-value
practices.
Three stages of filtering, Focal Point, Administrator, and of course peer pressure – if the
Focal Points in the community start seeing low value practices in the system, the
originator will surely hear about it.
# 8: If you build it they will not come.
Push the knowledge to users.

27. Strategies for Successful
Knowledge Sharing at Ford motors
# 7: System must be able to capture the value of the
practice.
# 6: Senior Leadership sponsorship is necessary, but not
sufficient.
# 5: The system must be available to the grass-roots level.

28. Strategies of Successful
Knowledge Sharing at Ford motors
# 4: Provide peer-recognition of people who
share knowledge.
# 3: Hi-Tech works only if there is Hi-Touch.
# 2: System must have automatic feedback.
# 1: Culture of knowledge sharing must exist.

29. Conclusions
1. Capture Hi-Value, Proven
Practices.
2. Recognize participants
3. Culture of knowledge sharing