Knowledge Communities Help To Identify Best Operating Practices
Authors: Saputelli L.A. , Ungredda A.D. 
Published: June 2014

This paper (SPE 58948) was revised for publication from paper 53759, originally presented at the 1999 SPE Latin American and Caribbean Petroleum Engineering Conference held in Caracas, 21–23 April. Original manuscript received 18 February 1999. This paper has not been peer reviewed.

This paper addresses state-of-the-art knowledge management as applied to an E&P organization, lessons learned in the last decade, and current challenges for adopting this philosophy. It shows the advantages of using novel knowledge-management techniques. This paper promotes learning-organization philosophy and the creation of virtual knowledge communities to identify best operating practices. Some techniques and tools are described that promote team effectiveness strategies and communications to leverage knowledge sharing and value creation.

Introduction

Currently, human knowledge duplicates every 4 years, and it is believed that it will duplicate every month after Year 2010. Traditional learning and knowledge strategies for managing and organizing enterprises have become obsolete. New philosophies are required to adopt new changes rapidly. Creation of a new collective intelligence would ensure competitiveness, added value, and survival skills to face tomorrow&apos;s changes better.1

The mission of knowledge management is to establish means and structures to generate additional value from best operating practices, lessons learned, maintenance of core competencies, and rapid adoption of new technologies that may impact the E&P business (Fig. 1). Knowledge management can be defined as the adding-value process that provides easy access and opportune use of collective knowledge and the informational infrastructure. The value addition includes problem solving, productivity enhancement, quality-of-service improvement, product innovation, market-trend forecasting, and process effectiveness.

Many E&P organizations are adopting best practices in knowledge management, such as Internet access,2 intranet, standard use of data and applications, technology clusters, an integrated reservoir-studies approach, virtual-discussion forum, and knowledge databases. Knowledge transfer takes part in different ways, from establishing a free-communication environment (intranet discussion forums) to formal standardization and proper storage of company best operating practices.

Knowledge communities have been around at least since the age of the European guilds. In fact, some definitions let us see them as being as old as the human journey on this planet. Currently, what makes this distinction so crucial to the vitality of organizations is the shift to quality relationships as the currency of thriving in chaos. Core competencies do not reside in the abstractions of management theories. In the real world of organizations, core competencies reside and grow in communities of practice called knowledge communities. Knowledge communities and their networks can help companies (1)organize work in ways that allow people to grow and to be happy, (2) accelerate business cycles, and (3) learn faster than the competition.

The vision of knowledge management is to incorporate added value continuously to transform implicit knowledge into organizational knowledge through optimum use of information technology. Knowledge communities capture and diffuse knowledge across the corporation, along the value chain. The capturing process should be kept simple and should be available corporate wide. Petróleos de Venezuela S.A. (PDVSA) recognizes that the only key tool that will allow the organization to adapt to present and future circumstances resides in the intrinsic value of knowledge and in its profitable use.

The corporate Technical Dept. leads approximately 30 knowledge communities responsible for capturing, preserving, and divulging best practices;maintaining and developing core competencies; and accelerating adoption of new technologies. Information related to these knowledge communities is saved and accessed through the corporate intranet (Fig. 2). Knowledge community members may belong to production technical management; any reservoir exploitation unit (REU); or our research center, Intevep.

Knowledge Communities: Virtual Teams

Knowledge communities are groups of people who share their knowledge and interests. The communities support people who work on common tasks or are in the same professional field and can benefit from sharing experience. Membership on these teams usually is voluntary, and the teams usually are focused on learning instead of on having specific deliverables.

Teams today are not what they used to be.3 The nature of teams has changed significantly because of change in organizations and the nature of the work they do. Organizations have become more distributed geographically and across industries. Relationships between people inside an organization and those previously considered outside (customers, suppliers, managers of collaborating organizations, other stakeholders) are becoming more important. Organizations have discovered the value of collaborative work. There is a new emphasis on knowledge management—harvesting the experience of members of the organization to make it available to the whole organization.

While distributed teams have some obvious problems and disadvantages, they also provide some advantages; these include the following.Developing and spreading better practices faster.Connecting "islands of knowledge" into self-organizing, knowledge-sharing networks of professional communities.Fostering cross-functional and -divisional collaboration.Increasing the ability to initiate and contribute to projects across organizational boundaries.