Knowledge Transfer between Service and Design Phases in the Oil Industry

Communication between departments in any company involved in the different phases of product lifecycle is crucial in order to correct faults from previous products. This paper illustrates a case study from the oil industry where knowledge transfer across departments is analysed. Interviews with engineering designers and service engineers were carried out. Knowledge arising from the operation of drilling machineries was investigated and compared to that relevant for the engineering designers; furthermore the mechanisms involved in the transfer of knowledge between service and design were investigated. Differences in knowledge needs were observed in the two departments: engineering designers were more orientated towards knowledge of machinery at a component level while service engineers were interested in obtaining an overview of the systems. The study showed that communication between the departments consisted prevalently of information pushed by service engineers to engineering designers. If information flowed in the other direction, i.e. from design to operation, this was likely to be pulled by service engineers. These observations have implications on the structuring and capturing of knowledge for the different user groups.