Evidences on organizational knowledge

Answer:

First, what does your organization considers organizational knowledge?

I like to think about organizational knowledge as:

1) what the organization knows it knows

2) what the organization does not know that it knows

This can be handled by human resources and is about training, coaching by experienced workers, and experience.

If an auditor, ask for evidences of this type I would show training and coaching records for new employees or employees that changed roles.

3) what the organization knows it does not know

This can be handled with the help of external training, suppliers, books and technical magazines, for example and can be performed by several internal functions.

If an auditor, ask for evidences of this type I would show evidences of learning occurred due to study, external training, reports from suppliers, reports from investigation, reports from improvement projects.

4) what the organization does not know that it does not know

This can be handled by different internal functions that maintain a kind of radar surveying relevant potential new knowledge with the help of books, magazines, blogs, conferences, networking, suppliers, …

I would show evidence of any case that could demonstrate this last case. For example, some years ago, I was working in a process engineering team in the chemical industry. One afternoon, one of my colleagues, reading a technical magazine, started to comment about a new kind of material for storage silos. Rapidly, we in the room started a kind of brainstorm about benefits and drawbacks. After that, my colleague contacted the manufacturer, requested technical information and presented it to our board of directors. After some calculations, it was easy to conclude that the new material had a lot of advantages. We used it in the next plant expansion.

The following material will provide you information about internal audits:

- ISO 9001 – How to manage knowledge of the organization according to ISO 9001 - https://advisera.com/9001academy/blog/2016/08/30/how-to-manage-knowledge-of-the-organization-according-to-the-iso9001/
- free online training ISO 9001:2015 Foundations Course – https://advisera.com/training/iso-9001-foundations-course/
- book - Discover ISO 9001:2015 Through Practical Examples - https://advisera.com/books/discover-iso-9001-2015-through-practical-examples/