Operations Knowledge to Action

摘要

This paper describes how a large multinational company, BP plc, explored the issues leading up to the delivery of a global company-wide process for improving operational performance through improved sharing of best practice knowledge. Key to success was the way cross-business-unit networks/communities were deliberately directed in order to identify potential marriages between high performers in specific business-critical practices and units seeking a corresponding improvement. This paper provides an understanding of how the three vectors, People, Processes & Technology, were applied to leverage knowledge in a global and multi-cultural organisation following major changes. Managing knowledge is fundamental to BP’s business success especially as they complete a series of mergers and acquisitions with, Amoco, Arco, Burmah Castrol, Erdolchemie, Vastar & Veba. That’s a total of ＄120bn worth of transactions in just over 36 months. Those transactions have created a new company - a ‘Supermajor’. The process of integration continues – not just creating a single organisation but also integrating skills, the people and the technology – the knowledge base and the know how. For BP nowadays it is about leveraging its scope and scale to deliver a world-class organisation, therefore if it can capture, share and transfer good practice across the span of its activities then there is indeed a great prize to be won. BP has consistently scored very high in the European Most Admired Knowledge Enterprise (MAKE) Awards every year since 1997/8. The scores for the MAKE Awards are determined by the CEOs of large corporations completing a detailed questionnaire of other companies covering all aspects of Knowledge Management.