Case-based approaches for knowledge application and organisational learning

In dealing with the strategic issues within a manufacturing system, it is necessary to facilitate formulating the composing elements of a set of strategic manufacturing practices and activity patterns that will support an enterprise to reinforce and increase its competitive advantage. These practices and activity patterns are based on learning and applying the knowledge internal and external to an organisation. To ensure their smooth formulation process, there are two important techniques designed – an expert adaptation approach and an expert evaluation approach. These two approaches provide structured processes to execute the organisational learning and knowledge application, which intend to guide the practitioners during the process of manufacturing competence development and improvement. They are based on Case-Based Reasoning (CBR) methodology and rely on cases as the primary knowledge supply. This paper aims to present the two approaches; introduce two types of tests on these approaches to verify their functionality: role-play testing and real world application testing; and summarises the applicability of the two approaches.