An Automated Taxonomy for Process Control in Knowledge Management Applications

摘要

The proliferation of knowledge has astutely characterized our generation as the information age. This knowledge explosion along with the problem of managing and processing that knowledge is an overwhelming task for humans. Yet it is this same knowledge that is essential to business and industry giving them an advantage over their competitors. For these reasons and more, Knowledge Management (KM) has become a popular research topic. The Knowledge Management field seeks to resolve this problem by proactively assisting the knowledge worker in presenting the right information at just the right time. In order to perform this task, a KM component must be aware of both the knowledge sources, where particular knowledge elements can be found, and the processes, how the knowledge worker uses the knowledge elements. The automatic classification and management of documents and other knowledge sources only addresses part of the problem. To be successful, process knowledge must be managed and exploited as well. This paper describes a procedure to manage the process knowledge of a KM component using a taxonomy to describe the process domain. An implementation of the procedure - an automated taxonomy, and an example of using the component is also presented. Finally, conclusions and future directions of this research are discussed.