The Interpretation of Knowledge Management Implementation Challenges and the Design of Relevant Solutions in Supply Chains (Case study: Steel Industry)

Knowledge management (KM) creates a collaborative environment that contributes to the improvements in the supply chain. It guarantees the access of members to external knowledge and the overall supply chain improvement in the competitive environment. The steel industry is considered as the second ‘key’ and ‘strategic’ industry after the oil and petrochemical industry in Iran. Implementing knowledge management in supply chains causes many costs due to some challenges. This study aims at selecting and ranking the KM challenges and solutions in order to apply them for improvement in the supply chain overall performance. First, the experts are asked to name and shortlist the challenges and solutions for the supply chain KM. The mentioned experts include 14 KM departments managers in the steel industry supply chain (Foolad Mobarakeh Complex, Ghaltaksazan Sepahan, Iran National Copper Company, Iran National Steel Company, Iran Alloy Steel Company and Isfahan Alloy Steel Company), KM consultants and KM professors. In order to identify the internal relationships among variables, the decision-making trial and evaluation laboratory-DEMATEL is adopted. Afterwards, best-worst method (BWM) is utilized for weighting the challenges. Finally, complex proportional assessment (COPRAS) is used to rank the solutions to handle challenges. Matlab and Excel are used to analyze the results which are also verified in the steel industry supply chain. The findings indicated that lack of leaders’ commitment towards KM, having a system of encouragement and reprimand for knowledge sharing and differences in the interests, values and culture of supply chain members are the most important challenges. Positive leadership towards KM, setting up incentives and reward systems for KM and strengthening the culture of cooperation in the chain are the highest rank solutions for removing the challenges or reducing their negative impacts.