# Factors in the Relationship between Maintenance Engineering and Knowledge Management
## 4 Discussion
**Knowledge transfer by formal and informal mechanisms:** formal mechanisms codify and archive the knowledge in form of software or documents which are easily reachable by any member of the organization [33]. The informal mechanisms transfer the knowledge through direct contact such as meetings of the members since theywork as a knowledge transfer means. It must be emphasized that the documents have greater impact on the organization at the point of knowledge transfer, but the lack of time hinders the documentation of important actions. The knowledge management team and technicians have different techniques to transfer knowledge. The first group transfer knowledge using emails or intranet, while the technicians have limited use of computer tools which makes them use their own knowledge. This indicates that technological tools used to transfer knowledge must be easy and simple, so it is reachable by any operational technician. **Use of knowledge and tools for its management:** by applying the acquired knowledge on maintenance activities creates a positive effect and improvement in the company. Proper knowledge and information management affects positively on actions such as:  
Breakdown repair. Understanding on working environment. New action opportunity. Maintenance planning. Priority in investment, reliability and energy efficiency. Optimize technical resources. Economic optimization. Improvement of reliability and response time. It is remarkable the use of diagrams only in certain facilities or equipment which limit the use of internal knowledge audits. In Figure 3, the qualitative research on industrial maintenance is shown, where the learning system must be based on actions of acquisition, retention and use of knowledge. This structures the knowledge and how the learning is produced. The proposed system must be able to incorporate concepts and techniques of how the knowledge is applied, thus the efficiency in maintenance services is improved. **Barriers and facilitators of transfer and creation of knowledge in maintenance organizations:** a flexible proactive organizational culture, together with a participatory style of management, are elements that allow activities to develop both in the generation and the transfer of knowledge within the organization. At the individual level, personal motivation and the opportunity to learn facilitates the generation of knowledge that when shared with other members of the company gives rise to organizational knowledge. The empirical evidence of this study shows that an open organizational culture motivates technicians to generate and share their knowledge in a more successful way and at the same time, and supports communication between company members. In maintenance controls, a grouped physical distribution of their jobs facilitates the transfer of knowledge  
There is a need for a \"knowledge manager\" as this captures and tranfers the knowledge into various members. This figure must have technical training and clear concept of knowledge management with high experience so the knowledge can be easily shared into technicians and managers. This creates quality in maintenance services and therefore an improvement in the organization itself, along with a connection between the rest of the activities of the organization such as production, administration areas, etc. This suggests that the knowledge to be transfer must be a priority and has to be planned as rest of the strategic activities of the company. There are challenges that make difficult a proper functioning of the knowledge transfer such as the lack of availability to address the important actions and cultural barriers explained in Table 3. It is remarkable the massive use of informal mechanisms used to transfer the knowledge which creates \"closed\" knowledge making it difficult to share into members of the organization. According to the participants in this research, the efficient way to improve self-learning is through the possibility to apply their knowledge on different activities of the organization.