Experience feedback, a goldmine for knowledge management

By Constant Ondo

One of the distinctive features of PICC Software is to make the capture and sharing of all kinds of experience extremely easy.

No effort for the user, full benefits for the company is our promise.

It is much more easy to record an idea, a question, a tip in PICC Software than in a notepad, on a post-it or in an excel file.

Above all, it is much more easy to file this information in the right place to retrieve it later on… and reuse it.

If users are so keen on feeding PICC Software with their experiences, it is mainly because they are doing it for themselves. Personal interest remains the best incentive.

It is also because they can decide to share these experiences with their community or to keep them as part of their secret garden.

And in case they decide to share a particular experience, they don’t have to waste time rephrasing it. PICC Software will cope with their own words.

Why do we focus on capturing experiences on the spot, in the rawest possible way ? Because they represent a goldmine for the company. They can be used to improve the operational performance or the customer experience, to feed the innovation pipeline, to enhance collaborative work or for skill management.

To illustrate how experienced workers are using PICC Software in their daily activities, I invite you to follow Philip, service technician for a manufacturer of industrial equipment, over a week.

Problem-solving support

Monday morning. Philip has been called for an emergency. The machine is stopped, he needs to act quickly. Philip finds that a component, which was replaced the week before, is broken, but he can’t understand why. No one of the failure causes he is used to seems to be involved here.

He checks in PICC Software and goes deeper in the root cause analysis… until he comes across a hint : one of his colleague reported that having the component replaced while a particular maintenance work is carried out could lead to an early failure.

This reminds Philip of a case he had forgotten : here again, the replacement of the component and the particular maintenance work had been carried out together, but it was an accidental contamination which led, soon after, to the component failure.

After checking with the customer, it appears that Philip has spotted the right problem. He quickly records a voice memo on PICC Software, adds a picture and moves on to the repair work.

Back to the office, he realizes that someone has, in the afternoon, used his experience during a breakdown diagnosis. Two claims avoided the same day : the week starts well.

UX improvement

Tueday. Philip has to train the maintenance team of one of his customers. A newly-launched machine has just arrived in the factory. People need to get used to the new control panel and new restart procedures.

During the training session, Philip realizes that in this particular factory, operators often need to use a function which doesn’t appear on the home screen of the control panel. They’re loosing time. Philip states that point in PICC Software. The project department might use the information for a future order.

Philip also notes that operators are stumbling on a particular step of the restart procedure which, for him, was clear. He rephrases his explanations several times until, finally, operators feel comfortable with the procedure. He records his final explanation in PICC Software. it will be useful for the next version of the machine’s manual.

Innovation management

Wednesday. Philip is visiting a customer for a thorough review of his maintenance plan. This long-time customer has almost become a friend. The meeting thus ends with a lunch to which another old partner of the company is invited.

Philip’s customer and the other supplier happen to discuss a recurring slowdown problem on a particular machine, and the customer makes an unrealistic whish : if only the drive chain could be completely reviewed.

The other supplier can not consider the idea. This would come down to build custom-made machines and their price would be far too high. He instead suggests other solutions which could be implemented in the future. The discussion stops here for the moment.

It however gave Philip some ideas. His machines are delivering the expected outputs ; however, changes in the drive chain could help significantly reduce the wear of a component which represents an important cost in the contract Philip came to negociate this morning.

Philip doesn’t know if the R&D department has already considered the idea, not even if this is in line with the company’s strategy. But he is sure that solving this wear problem would help secure the business with his customer.

After lunch, and before hitting the road again, Philip checks PICC Software on his mobile. Unsurprisingly, several of his colleagues are facing the same problem. But no one has suggested Philip’s solution. Philip switches on the voice recording and summarizes the discussion he attended as well as the idea that came out of it.

History will show that Philip not only spotted an interesting path for improvement, but also, without realizing it, collected an important customer insight. One detail of the discussion will prove particularly interesting for another R&D project and lead to a major innovation.

Knowledge transfer

Thursday is the day when, each week, Philip has to transfer his knowledge. Philip will be retiring in less than three years and his company has hired Tom, a co-op student who is supposed to replace him.

Philip was not enthusiastic at the prospect of training the young guy : it was going to take him a huge amount of time to formalize all his knowledge.

But since Philip started use PICC Software to support the knlowledge transfer process, he really enjoys Thursdays.

Knowledge transfer sessions are lively conversations where Tom is screening years and customers, always starting with the same question : what is the main problem you had to solve and what solutions did you find ?

Philip is revisiting with passion all he has lived through, remembers stories he had forgotten. He is telling his own story and fully realizes how each experience has helped him grow his skills. Philip keeps on learning as well. The discussion with Tom is sometimes turning into a game where the younger is challenging the elder with new perspectives.

Together, Tom and Philip reveal a tacite knowledge that the latter felt unable to express. A knowledge that Tom is often implementing at once, since Philip is frequently inviting him on the field when something interesting occurs.

Skill management

Philip’s annual review is planned this Friday. The stake is not as high as a few years ago. Philip is no longer expecting a career development. But he stills wants his commitment to be recognized and his bonus to be paid.

The interview will exceed his expectations. Philip will not only get the maximum bonus but also be entrusted a new mission.

Philip fed PICC Software with several solutions which have been used by many colleagues ; he has then been identified as the lead expert for machine diagnosis. Philip has now the opportunity to participate in an open innovation project where he will collaborate with a start-up specialized in artificial intelligence to develop an automatic diagnosis solution based on IoT.

Philip is delighted. This project gives a meaning to his remaining years of work. The week could’nt end better.

Through Philip’s story, I hope I have shown you, if there were ever a need to, how experience feedback is :

  • Full of information for all departments within the company,
  • Easy to verbalize,
  • Easy to evaluate and confirm,
  • Rewarding.

I also hope I convinced you that PICC Software is today the best solution to capture feedback experience and make the best use of it.

Do you also believe that feedback experience is a goldmine for knowledge management?

Feel free to contact us in order to discover PICC Software in detail.

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