Share The KnowledgeShare The Knowledge

Eastman Kodak Co. is carefully making its first foray into knowledge management. The provider of digital-imaging technologies and services is embarking on a 400-person pilot deployment of Tacit Knowledge Systems Inc.'s KnowledgeMail software to encourage better information sharing among engineering teams. The goal: to avoid duplicating efforts when trying to solve problems.

Kodak chose Tacit because its software focuses on people rather than documents, says Brendan Regan, manager of engineering design for Kodak's commercial imaging group, which is conducting the pilot deployment.

Kodak also wasn't interested in building and maintaining its own taxonomy system to support a knowledge database, Regan says. KnowledgeMail automatically generates taxonomies based on the documents it scans by looking for noun-verb phrases, then associating them with the authors of the documents in which they appear to create profiles of people with expertise in certain areas.

Kodak will test KnowledgeMail during the first quarter of next year before deciding on its next step. "Based on that pilot, we'll determine how far this thing goes within Kodak," Regan says. He declined to disclose how much Kodak is paying for the pilot, but he says a successful test run could lead to a full-scale deployment across the commercial imaging group, which is one of Kodak's four primary business units.

Regan says he expects the software to be a hit. That's because Tacit should prove to be an ideal fit, given the way in which most engineers like to do things.

"Engineers will talk your ear off, but the majority of them aren't interested in documenting anything," Regan says. That means people looking for help need to contact engineers in person. Do that, Regan says, and "the challenge of solving your problem will keep them talking for hours."