Knowledge Management in Support of Spacecraft Operations

Recently the ESA Corporate KM Initiative has been launched and in this context a framework of KM projects to be undertaken at different ESA sites has been drawn. The paper presents those KM projects implemented at ESOC as services offered to the community. These services are related to increasing knowledge transfer, sharing and collaboration in particular within and across projects, assessing the core competences, strengthening the lessons learned and golden rules dissemination, and reinforcing the process of tacit knowledge capture. The competence management model defined in ESOC is also presented showing the evolution from the concept of competence appraisal dedicated to single section/division to a key tool for the management. The paper concludes by presenting the way forward and an initial approach to measure the KM benefits.