User experience of a social media based knowledge sharing system in industry work

With increasing automation, the work in manufacturing industry is getting knowledge intensive: workers need to solve complex problems to keep systems running. The knowledge needed in these situations often cannot be found in ready-made manuals but it is tacit knowledge possessed by co-workers. This paper presents a user study of a knowledge sharing platform. The platform integrates production information and social media features, thus connecting discussions to specific machine states or error situations. The platform was evaluated with factory workers in a workshop. The results show that integration of production information and social media features such as messaging is valuable, as it proactively provides practical solutions to the problem at hand. The results also show that the use of social media features in industrial environment requires changes in organizational policies, processes and culture. The findings of this study can be considered when developing social media applications for industrial use.