The concept of knowledge object management system as a tool reducing the knowledge deficit in the functioning of machine-building industry enterprises

This article presents the concept of Knowledge Object Management System, which constitutes an information tool that comprises methods for the acquisition and processing of contextual knowledge, necessary for the proper functioning of enterprises of machine-building industry. The concept is based on the universal structure in the form of unified elementary objects, combining a single formal structure with the possibility of recording various types of information. The functionality of the system is grounded on research that was conducted in selected Polish machine-building industry enterprises. The research was conducted with the use of questionnaires and direct interviews. It enabled the assessment of knowledge deficit in knowledge management processes in these enterprises. Machine-building industry enterprises belong to the production environment, defined in literature as engineering-to-order, ETO. This environment is a short-run production, i.e. the production to customer's individual order that requires specific engineering studies.