Air Products study of search and improvement

Mary Moulton

Air Products and Chemicals – Allentown PA

Taxonomy Specialist, KM Solutions

20,000 employees

Operations in 30 contries

Continuous improvement of innovation

Improve the ideas that enter the innovation pipeline

Develop an improved search tool for technical information

Looking at Knowledge Reuse

Developed a method for measuring the ease of knowledge retrieval.

Each searcher was tasked with finding 3 search goals by any means

Test preformed in searcher’s workspace

Test proctor recorded searcher’s strategies and success in finding goal

Results

65% failure rate in computer searching

Intranet search tools not precise enough

Knowledge stored inconsistently

Numerous unconnected systems

Searcher often does not know where to start

If they did know, 3 +- 2 minutes

Role and years at company not predictors of searching section

Interviewed Technology Managers

Result

Knowledge Retrieval Important

Knowledge Retrieval effectiveness low

Solution

Restrict cope of search to technology applications

Built taxonomy and metadata repository for browse and search

Custom thesauri

Reused the AP online Directory for interface

Develop behavioral aspects around information seeking

Got high level management support for content management

Use Microsoft sharepoint search

DT search as crawler

Used multiple different tools to create the solution

Spent time weighting content

Now moving into improving content

Navigation issues – memorized path to content

Needed to overcome the negative impact of previous problems with search