Vitals ESP Leads the TSBC to Brave the Wind and the Waves

Taiwan Shipbuilding Corporation (TSBC), the one and only world-class shipbuilding yard in Taiwan, has earned great reputation in the maritime industry by the advanced shipbuilding equipments, consummate skills and diversified operations on shipbuilding, naval vessel building, ship repairing and machine making etc. The 1,800 TEU series with innovative design technologies even has been put on the cover of the magazine Significant Ships of 2014. This is the 22th vessel in Taiwan which has been reported in the magazine since 1998, making TSBC become one of world famous shipbuilding corporations.

The 1,800 TEU Container Vessel was honored by Significant Ships again. Each year, the Royal Institute of Naval Architects (RINA) selects the most representative ship of the year for shipowners worldwide and ship information lovers in diversified fields. The TSBC 1,800 TEU Container Vessel adopts the latest energy saving technology and designs with the unique idea of “Sea Sword Bow”. Therefore, it was selected to be on the magazine cover of the year for the features of energy saving, low noise and the overall performance conditions.

​TSBC strives for transformation after undergoing the downturn of the global shipping market, financing difficulty and economic situation changes. For developing diverse operations, we make every effort to promote the "168 leap toward excellence plan". One of the items to be achieved is to increase channels of knowledge and technology heritage. This is one of the key factors that TSBC makes use of knowledge management system to improve enterprise quality and enhance the competitiveness.

Face the retirement wave at ease in the new era of knowledge management
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In 2013, TSBC stepped into a transformation era of knowledge management.Despite as an old enterprise in Taiwan, we have introduced KM platform since 2005 for economic performance improvement and innovation development in hope to establish the knowledge blueprint for the company and to shape shared culture. However, the outcome was not as expected due to the limits on platform functions and the usage inconvenience.It was the time when "168 plan" has been pushed that we were facing an awkward situation of senior manpower drain. The Department of Corporate Planning hence started to plan for a more user-friendly KM platform and aggressively introduce Vitals ESP into the company, which opens the new KM era of TSBC.

"TSBC are facing the retirement wave in 5 years."The Corporate Planning Manager Mao-Hua, Yu said our company has not recruited new employees for more than 10 years since 1995, leading to talent gaps. We started to recruit new blood successively until the very recent years. Many technologies and knowledge cannot be passed on thoroughly. Therefore, we have to accelerate the electronicalization of the experience and knowledge in order to shorten the orientation training time.How to dissolve the rejection feelings of the internal employees during the transitional period between new and old KM platform?With the professional counsellings from the advisor of knowledge management in the Galaxy Software Services and the driving forces from every units, the Department of Corporate Planning periodically hold announcement campaigns and knowledge exchange meetings. The employees, thus, can understand the extraction methods and follow-up benefits for knowledge gaps during learning by doing.

With the motivation of culture, the uploading number of Vitals ESP files has reached 10,768 and the average click through rate per month is 6,679 times within a short year. Compared with the statistics of the previous KM platform (the uploading file number was 11,000 in the past total 8 years and the average click through rate per year was 5,590 times), Vitals ESP realizes the synergy and value of information electronicalization and 168 plan.
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The knowledge management system takes Content × Social × Mobility as the core spirit in the new era.
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Its knowledge architecture is easy to understand and the search function is powerful as Google's.

Users can get the files they need quickly and correctly with the high efficiency full-text search. With the multidimensional knowledge saving and management system, they also can review data from different perspectives, combine and connect different knowledge files to create the highest value of collective wisdom.Through knowledge audit, the essential was chosen from the enormously complex data accumulated by the time-honored brand (a shipbuilding yard runs for almost half a century). After this, Vitals ESP then combined the segment information into useful knowledge, found the core knowledge and knowledge gaps, illustrated a knowledge map step by step, passed appropriate knowledge to appropriate employees, and activated the value and reused it. However, even if files are classified clearly, it may still spend plenty of time to search for a file due to miscellaneous items. Manager Yu said with affirmation, "the search function of Vitals ESP is powerful as Google's".

Vitals ESP shortens the learning curve and build a shared culture with selflessness.
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Pursuing continuous innovations and excellence, TSBC has recruited new blood every year in recent years. Open internship opportunities are also available for interns through the collaboration between industry and school during winter and summer vacations.For the largish group of novices and interns, we have to adopt a quicker and more efficient way to teach them for increasing instructional outcomes and lowering the educational costs.
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Now, we would like to help each of our employees quickly know well about the enterprise culture, industry knowledge and professional skills so that they can assist to deal with related business and handle their independent work. Therefore, every departments are asked to upload the past project documents and forms to Vitals ESP and record the relevant procedures and requirements according to different project. In the orientation training, all the newcomers will be asked to be familiar with related business affairs through Vitals ESP first. By doing so, orientation training time can be shortened largely, and the frustration feelings arising in newcomers during the adaptation period can be decreased. The experience gaps can be bridged step by step eventually.

As a shipbuilder, the infinite shipbuilding knowledge is an essential foundation for professional skills. The core knowledge from the development of shipbuilding industry in different countries, the current market and trends, professional and informal shipbuilding language to proprietary technology ect. are the necessary know-how.

In the past, TSBC lacked a platform for employee sharing and searching. Now the senior staffs build a "Library" folder on Vitals ESP, and save the precious knowledge which is systematically arranged in kinds in the folder for reference anytime. Upholding the concept of "Personal valuables in the past, TSBC remembrance in the future", we are hoping to build a culture in which experiences are selflessly shared. The knowledge thus can be effectively passed down and transferred.
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Make the best use of communities and take innovative steps for knowledge

TSBC emphasizes on sharing exchanges among people. We hope to create closeness among people by connecting them through the community platform. Further, it can achieve knowledge dissemination and facilitate broad exchanges and merging with different knowledge.
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Therefore, Vitals ESP as the auxiliary platform of project progress management, it is not only used for information recording and document saving in our company but also used for across-department communication with its community function to increase the participation of employees. Besides, for facilitating knowledge exchanges, the internal also aggressively creates expert yellow pages. Employees are encouraged to discover internal experts from the expert yellow pages. This can facilitate the interactions among expert employees in the organization. Employees also can extract valuable experience, be stimulated creation, and accumulate wisdoms of crowds by doing so. Innovative value is enlightened. TSBC, therefore, steps forward further to the goal of diverse operations.
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The Vitals ESP Mobile App realizes the application of mobilization and solves the problems of technology training on site and knowledge establishment.

The first step for knowledge management is to turn tacit knowledge into explicit knowledge and save it.The most important thing for TSBC is to control the technology and procedures on site, even if novices have professional certificates. It is because the one who has certificates does not mean he/she is a skilled worker. Manager Yu pointed out, "It is hard to cultivate on-site technicians. Training them is even harder! For example, it takes about 3 years for a welding technician to have mature skills, and for a ironsmith, it even takes 5-10 years to be a take-charge ironworker who can work independently".

The shipbuilding implicit knowledge of professional techniques and practical situations (from office operation, field operation, generated block to out-fitting etc.) are all in the heads of experienced master technicians. For those senior employees who are used to master apprentice system, it is more difficult for them to translate techniques into words than to work with hammer. However, supporting mobile devices, Vitals ESP offers video and picture taking, which helps employees record on-site techniques and simultaneously save the files on the platform. Then, a technology knowledge bank can be built by collecting text files converted from videos and images. This not only accelerates the training speed, lowers the risks and mistakes of on-site employees, but also even matches the core spirit of our 168 plan- the promotion of mobilization applications on work.

Establish ocean industrial group​

"Knowledge is both power and wisdom for individuals and it is even a profit guarantee for business organizations." In the opinion of Manager Yu, expanding, exchanging, and merging the existing knowledge through Vitals ESP is not only becoming an effective approach to increasing the entire quality level of employees and cultivating human resources, but also a reference basis for driving entire organization performance and offering management decisions. It makes TSBC take a great step toward the ideal technological and innovative "ocean industrial group".