Improving performance of apparel manufacturing through knowledge management

Abstract

Land, capital and machinery are no longer decisive in a world-wide market of products and ideas. Individuals, companies and even nations have become more and more dependent on the way they leverage their competencies and apply their knowledge in order to realize their goals. Knowledge capital is the wayan organization derives wealth from its information resource on a regular basis. Knowledge, like any other asset, needs to be managed pro-actively. Today Knowledge Management (KM) is a newly emerging, interdisciplinary business model that has knowledge within the framework of an organization as its focus. KM is the process of capturing and making use of an organization's knowledge assets any-where in the organization - on paper, in documents, in databases (called explicit knowledge) or in people's heads (called tacit knowledge). KM practices include knowledge creation, collection, storing, sharing, and application towards organizational survival through which organizations generate value from their knowledge based assets (Wig, 1996).