for Nestle
Executive Summary
The purpose of this report is to develop a knowledge management strategy for Nestle. Secondary
sources of information such as internet, journals and articles were used to find the knowledge
gap in the company. The current knowledge management strategy being used has been
mentioned, and what the company wants to achieve has also been specifies in the report.
The company has several areas that have been criticized due to lack of knowledge transfer in the
company and these areas have been identified and recommendations are provided in the report.
Background
Nestle is known as nutrition, health and wellness company, it is one of the largest food and
beverage company in the world and has dominated the food industry since almost 150 years.
The Nestle Company was founded in Vevey, Switzerland in the year 1866 by Henri Nestle with
the Main aim of producing high quality milk food for babies and is today the world's leading
food and beverage company. The Nestle Company had aimed to build a business as the world's
leading nutrition, health and wellness based on human values and principles. This goal was
achieved through various well known brands that come under Nestle.
The company has grown significantly and has achieved quite a respect and trust by its consumers
in the market. The company's products are growing through innovation while maintaining a
balance between geographic activities and product lines. The company prioritizes in producing
Objectives
One of the objectives of Nestle is to make better food for their customers. There is a very clear
relationship between the objectives and the company logo. As the company strives to provide
there consumers with food that would be safe, of high quality and has optimal nutrition.
Nestle's corporate objective is to be the world's largest and best branded food manufacturer,
whilst ensuring that the Nestle name is synonymous with products of the highest quality (Nestle
Corporate Objective, 2009). It shows that Nestle has already achieved a part of objective that is
to be the largest food production company. This objective is related to another objective of Nestle
which is the company wants to make sure that the product creates value that can be sustained
over the long term for shareholders, employees, consumers, business partners and the national
Nestle main objective is to follow and respect all applicable local laws in each of its
markets.
The company aims to be as decentralized as possible within the framework imposed.
Nestls objective is to maintain the team work and the levels of organizational
Structure
Nestle has over 500 factories in 76 countries, and sells its products in 193 nations. The company
employs around 280 000 people and have factories or operations in almost every country in the
world. The following is Nestls organizational chart, as of January 2010. This is organizational
Methodology
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The method of knowledge management approach is Zacks approach proposed by Michael Zack
in which he suggests that the framework which helps an organisation make an explicit
connection between its competitive situation and a knowledge management strategy to help the
organisation maintain or (re-)establish its competitive advantage. (Zack, 1999) This would help
In this approach, analysis is done with the help of SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities
and Threats) that helps identifying the gaps in an organization's knowledge. This would help the
organization to find out where the knowledge which can be used and where can it be used to
This is achieved by analyzing the organizations knowledge position along two dimensions:
It refers to the area where the organization needs to improve and develop its knowledge in vs. the
This refers to if the knowledge is within the organization or outside. Some organizations are
Others are more internally-oriented, building up unique knowledge and experience which is
The information collected for the research was done with the help of an employee at Nestle
Middle East (UAE) as well as literature review based on secondary resources that were found on
SWOT Analysis
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Gap Analysis
Strategic Gap
Nestle based product) which was aggressively marketed by the Nestle group in
almost all the sectors. Over diversion led to unclear organizational mission and poor
financial result.
2. Prioritize markets and determine competition focus. For instance, the introduction
product LC-1(pro biotic yogurt) in the market where pro biotic food was already
popular and the consumers knew the health benefits of it such as European countries
like Germany and France. Instead the product was introduced in Latin America
where there was no much knowledge amongst public. Another issue was the product
was introduced as a individual scientific product, which should have been introduced
product as first or second movers where Nestle made many mistakes. In case of
releasing products, it should make quick move and enter the market as quickly as
possible to gain the market share. For example when Nestle released its cereals much
about the product to be introduced and its benefits before launching. The education
campaign should be backed by scientific support and with example of success from
America's and European country, whereas it should have a wider focus on emerging
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markets in Asian countries such as China, Russia and India as they were closed to
Knowledge Gaps
1. The objective of food being safe is not very clear to management. There were certain
failures with regards to the safety of the food products such as the Food
contamination of Pet food in 2007 and Toll's Cookie dough food contamination case
that took place in 2009. This led to recalling of products from the market
2. Nestle has been alleged of breaking the local law, in case of cutting down of rain
Hence there is not much communication between the levels which leads to lack of
knowledge sharing within the departments of the company. For instance A few years
ago Nestle UK realized the gap of knowledge was the teams of lean experts, there
was often a limited lean knowledge base that retained their knowledge within factory
their discipline that was gained from their initial professional education and on-going
development, the operations and manufacturing managers often did not have the
same focused training structure. As a result, many had just not had the opportunity
practices.
4. The company has not been able to achieve its goal with of being a completely
I. People - People are the most important assets in a company. Members at all levels
of the organization are concerned to add value to the organization. The company
has a Hierarchical culture, where there are a few levels of management but has
broad spans of control and is rule based and formal. Hence, communication and
cooperation is restricted to the respective level to which the employee belongs to.
II. Process -In a large organization like Nestle, a process is a chain of actions taken
product. Experts are invited from all over the world to perform the following
Develop and process the business model that will support the new product to avoid minimum
commercial risk.
Launch the product (in a single region at first) and aggressive marketing to build a customer
demand.
further development begins. Finally comprehensive market research is carried out for
Technology
Technologies that are currently used by Nestle are the ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning), it is a
computer based system that is used to manage internal and external resources which includes
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tangible assets, financial resources, materials and human resources. The main purpose of the
software is to help the flow of information between all business functions within the organization
and also manage connections outside stake holders. Businesses use a large number of softwares
and processes and introducing an ERP system which is usually complicated impose some serious
SAP is the kind of ERP system Nestle uses. In fact, Nestle uses five modules
of SAP namely,
Purchasing, financials, sales and distribution, accounts payable and accounts receivable. SAP
systems are used for accessing, distributing and sorting the information.
Manugistic's Supply Chain system is currently used by Nestle for automating its supply chain
operations.
Intranet is widely used technology by almost all the organizations in the world. Sharing
information amongst different departments is easier with the help of intranet. It is used in Nestle
for delivering tools and applications, e.g. collaboration (to facilitate working on groups or
teleconferencing)
Or corporate directories, sales and CRM tools, project management etc. to improve the
productivity.
CRM (Customer Relationship Management) Nestle Food service have adopted CRM. It is a tool
WANT
People: While maintaining the formal culture of the organization networking and communication
shoul be encouraged. The organization's structure should be assuring operational speed along
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with personal responsibilities with higher focus on results. Communication amongst different
Clear levels of responsibility and well defined objectives are a must to know
Process:
After the development process, research on the product should be done not only by preference
and trends but also by using the previous knowledge and comparing the previous trends and
Apart from this, before developing the product the nutritional value should be considered well, as
The marketing for the product should be prioritized rather than aggressive marketing in areas the
Technology:
The company is using Manugistic's Supply chain system which is limited to work on the Java
framework. The technology should be replaced by SAP's supply chain module, APO (Advance
Planner and Optimizer). Since the company uses SAP's other modules it would be easier for
Nestle to streamline and accelerate the entire development process at the same time support
boosting productivity.
Recommendations
People:
Training should be provided to the staff as a new technology is introduced by Nestls learning
and sharing program. A program called manufacturing improvement techniques program (MITP)
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provided by Small piece Enterprises should be introduced to train the managers. This kind of
program basically consists of softer management issues of change, how to handle resistance to
change, planning and running projects, leadership, and team building and communication skills.
This would help Nestle becoming a learning organization and would provide its staff the
confidence to deal with the changes in technology taking place. The course would also help
improve the culture of the company, teamwork and high performance by the staff. Moreover,
companies who have trained there staff with MITP course has seen significant and a wide
Open communication and active cooperation must be encouraged where everyone in the
department at any level would get a chance to contribute their suggestions and views to improve
and enhance the company also result in personal development. Along with this it would lead to
knowledge transfer.
Enforce regular sharing views via blogs for the employees to stay connected and give their
Solutions and experiences based on the problems or changes in the organization posted on the
intranets for the employees to view at any time they want in need.
Process
As the product development process starts in the organization, previous tacit and explicit
knowledge should be used. As well as, external knowledge shall be well processed before the
Research should be carried out about the customer demands, also the region where the product is
to be launched; their cultural value should also be studied. It is necessary to understand the target
market before developing the product. The nutritional value of the product should also be
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considered at the time of research, otherwise the product might fail because of its low nutritional
Several quality checks should be done using Nestle's Quality Assurance program to maintain the
Once the product is developed and is ready for distribution in the market, customers must be
Technologies
Technologies that should be used for knowledge sharing should be Data repositories A database
warehouse is one large Data Repository of all business related information including all
historical data of the business organization implementing the data warehouse. Data warehousing
is a complex process of building a data repository in the form of a relational database so that the
company can support web or text mining in order to leverage data and transform or aggregate
In all cases, organizations use data warehousing to gain a competitive advantage, support for
Some of the key components of data warehousing are Decision Support Systems (DSS) and Data
Mining (DM).
A content management system (CMS) is a collection of procedures used to manage work flow in
Allow for a large number of people to contribute to and share stored data
Control access to data, based on user roles. User roles define what information each user