Improving risk management practice in industrialization projects: case study of an automotive company

Abstract

Project-based work is increasingly regarded as a powerful organizational response to the complex challenges of management, being an excellent way to integrate organizational functions with the expectations of stakeholders, with the aim of achieving higher levels of performance and productivity. However, the particular characteristics of projects lead them to be considered risky undertakings, making risk management one of the most important knowledge areas among project management practices. Knowledge management is, in turn, progressively taken into account in risk management, since many of the problems underlying risk management processes arise from scarcity of information or lack of knowledge to understand the existing information. Then, within the scope of risk management, knowledge management can provide learning from past risks in order to simplify and support the management of new risks and decision-making. The case study research methodology was applied at a plant of a first tear automotive industry supplier by using participant observation, document analysis and questionnaires to describe the current industrialization project risk management practice. Then a proposal for a risk catalog in the form of a risk database was developed to integrate information and knowledge in order to promote and support the existing and future project risk management practice.