BUCKMAN LABSBuckman Labs is a speci

BUCKMAN LABS

Buckman Labs is a specialty chemical company that serves the pulp and
paper, water treatment, leather, coatings, agricultural, and wood treatment
industries. Its core competency is its ability to create and manufacture
innovative solutions to control the growth of microorganisms. Buckman’s
expertise also spans specialty chemicals such as microbicides, scale
inhibitors, corrosion inhibitors, polymers, dispersants, and defoamers. When
evaluated by Goldman Sachs in 1990, Buckman had a market value $175
million higher than its asset value. The difference owes a lot to the company’s
focus on knowledge management and knowledge transfer as effective tools
to improve and sustain its competitive advantage. It saw the need for a
system that would facilitate the growth in the value of knowledge that
existed within the company. The best brains in the company on a particu-
lar topic were not necessarily found in the U.S. company but were spread
out around Buckman’s 80 worldwide offices. Hence, a system was needed
to facilitate communication between sister companies so that the collective
knowledge and understanding of the entire organization could be brought
to bear on any problem. The resulting acceleration of knowledge would lead
to a strategic advantage based on the leverage of internal as opposed to
external knowledge. This thinking culminated in the Knowledge Transfer
Department whose goals are to accelerate the accumulation and dissemina-
tion of knowledge by all Buckman Labs’ associates worldwide, to provide
easy and rapid access to Buckman Labs’ global knowledge bases, and to
eliminate time and space constraints in communication. The department was
given a budget of about $8 million.
The primary tool employed by Buckman to enable employees to share
knowledge is called K’Netix, the Buckman Laboratory Knowledge Network.
KNetix is an interconnected system of knowledge that Buckman associates
use worldwide to share knowledge electronically and to collaborate closely
with each other, unfettered by time and distance. The principal component
of KNetix is Tech Forum, a private bulletin board on CompuServe that only
Buckman associates are allowed to access. An employee in Malaysia who
needs information about a water treatment process can post a query to the