The Application of Knowledge Management to Large Complex Systems

When a complex entity comprises, for example, a set of individually complex, geographically distributed, evolving systems, the question of how to manage change to such a system-of-systems takes great significance. Not only must change be managed at the level of each component system, it must also be managed across the entire interrelated and interacting set. The solution presented in this paper is based on research that treats a class of warships in the Royal Australian Navy (RAN), along with the associated operational, production and support systems, as a system-of-systems (SoS) and examines the management of change in this complex entity. The paper describes a knowledge management (KM) strategy that can be used to plan, manage, coordinate and implement change across the entire lifecycle of the target system-of-systems and which may be generalisable to other systems-of-systems