Transferring Tacit Knowledge into Explicit: A Case Study in a Fully (Semi) Automated Parking Garage

Abstract

Academia cooperates with industries within research through what we call applied research. Industries realize that the knowledge management process is vital for a competitive advantage and survival. Within applied research, we strive to transfer tacit knowledge into explicit. In this paper, we aim to explain and understand tacit knowledge from two perspectives-, i.e., the philosophical and sociological perspectives. We illustrate the philosophical perspective through Michael Polanyi’s model of tacit knowledge, where we consider the sociological perspective through Harry Collins’s classification of tacit knowledge. However, Collins state that not all types of tacit knowledge can be converted to explicit, where we believe that we can generally transfer all types of tacit knowledge using Systems Engineering and Systems Thinking. Further, we explain Nonaka and Takeuchi’s model of knowledge creation. We adapt this model to transfer tacit knowledge into explicit in terms of data and visualization knowledge through a use case study. We apply mainly Systems Thinking and its tool, i.e., Systemigram, for this transformation. The outcome of the use case study encouraged us to believe that Systems Thinking and its visualization and communication tool could aid at preserving and managing the tacit knowledge. In other words, this paper also is an attempt to add the Systems Thinking and Systems Engineering perspective to the body of knowledge.