Track: Engineering Management

Abstract

Shorter innovation cycles and an increase in market demands and regulations force companies to change the way they work. Especially in engineering, several departments are closely working together to achieve a company’s goals and increase its innovation potential. Studies show, that knowledge has a positive effect on the operational performance of a company and product innovation. Therefore, it is necessary to manage knowledge effectively and efficiently. Several approaches and models already describe how knowledge management could be realized. Some focus on knowledge transfer as part of knowledge management but rarely describe how to support the improvement of knowledge transfers in product and production engineering. Therefore, the InKTI – Interdepartmental Knowledge Transfer Improvement method was developed to support the improvement of knowledge transfers (in terms of speed and quality) in product and production engineering. This method has been applied in a field study. The findings and improvement potentials have been considered in the further development of the method. This paper contributes to the continuous validation of the InKTI method through a second field study at the company Witzenmann GmbH (Witzenmann), which is a world market leader in the area of flexible metal elements. The research need is to improve knowledge transfers at Witzenmann. Based on this, a concept for the validation of the InKTI method at Witzenmann is developed and implemented. Lastly, the results and findings of the first and second validation studies are compared.