The “MACKMA” Research Project Facilitates a More Efficient Distribution of Knowledge at Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises

As is the case at all organisations, knowledge at small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) is distributed differently among individual employees. If a member of staff leaves a company, their individual knowledge goes with them. In order to avoid this loss of knowledge, companies need to consider the issue of how knowledge can be efficiently retained within a company and shared between employees, especially when it comes to an increase in processes requiring in-depth knowledge.

This precise issue forms the focus of the new “MACKMA” research project, which was launched by the project partners initOS GmbH from Magdeburg, Agricon GmbH from Jahna and InfAI e.V. from Leipzig at the beginning of 2016. “MACKMA” stands for “MAss Customised Knowledge Management”. The main focus of the project is to support and promote the mass production of knowledge in accordance with clients’ individual needs and requirements and to link this production to knowledge management approaches in order to develop a suitable procedure that can be applied to SMEs. Up until the end of the project period on 30th April 2018, the project partners will examine this topic and develop an application system prototype based on their findings in order to provide suitable support for the procedure created. The first application partner for the project is the company Agricon, a service provider for precision farming. Alongside this application prototype, the project partners will also produce a guide that will enable the approach taken with Agricon to be transferred to other SMEs. In this context, evaluation and improvement mechanisms that can be used to improve existing knowledge also need to be devised.

The Project Manager and Managing Director of the consortium coordinator, Dipl.-Wirt.-Inf. Frederik Kramer, considers “effective and efficient knowledge management to be the central challenge facing SMEs when it comes to being able to flexibly respond to customer requirements and achieve long-term competitive advantages in the current global competitive environment”. Dr Stephan Klingner (Project Manager for the project partner InfAI) adds that “the knowledge management system that we aim to develop focuses on explicating the knowledge of individual employees so it can be passed on within a company in accordance with the company’s needs and requirements”.