To form such a production path the area of the Process Technology as well as the area of the Human System of the operating personnel call for special attention. Awareness over the whole Production Process and the own position in it, objective oriented communications between individual unit operations and the availability and actual use of intelligent Process Equipment, Automation and Information Technology create the best available area for production of steel where Knowledge is a vital and product determining factor.

Knowledge in the Production of Steel is created everywhere in the Production Process - intentional or unintentional - so that Knowledge Management in it is a value creator. Now with using "Knowledge Management" we want to describe here how to manage that a certain Knowledge is built and preserved, with a understanding of Knowledge that it is the result of actions that are oriented toward achieving an objective. As Ikujiro Nonaka and Hirotaka Takeuchi found that "The unique feature of knowledge as a resource lies in the fact that it becomes obsolete as soon as it is created" the value of knowledge lies in its creation. With setting oriented actions to achieve some objective we create knowledge. Once the objective is achieved, the knowledge created in hindsight becomes obsolete, however without creating the knowledge the objective would not got achieved at all and would remain in theory.

Obsolete however will not mean without value, with obsolete we mean that it becomes basis for creation of new knowledge that in turn again is creating new value. So in the production of Steel this will mean that with the creation of such knowledge this process is required to change Technology, Production Practices and the individual and collective Skills of the Operating Personnel. So the employed Technology, Structures and Personnel require freedom to change, the boundary conditions of the whole Steelproducers Organization needs to be oriented as the enabler of knowledge creation.

Opposite this flexibility is the character of the Production Equipment which usually are Capital Investments with long term perspective. So within the time frame of a single Equipment life time its technological and metallurgical capabilities describe a certain frame within flexibility is possible, and outside which modernizatios will be required. The conditions describing this frame we call the Technological Boundary Conditions as these define what is possible and what would become possible if these conditions are changed. Corresponding with these boundary conditions those are defining also what type and amount of Knowledge is possible to create. Proactive and applied Knowledge Management therefore means to become aware of the Technological Boundary Conditions and to compare those to what is required to build a certain type of Knowledge in the whole Steel Production Process or a single unit of it.

Production Practices are another area of application for active Knowledge Management. With use of Level 2 Process Optimization Systems that allow the maintenance, development and online comparison between the actual Process states and those "Best and Until Now Known Practices" these systems allow navigation of the Operating Personnel to perform production. However the Quality of a single production unit needs alignment with the whole production process from front to end. To achieve a high probability to produce a single end product requires that all single production units produce or refine the associated intermediate product with its characteristics along the best course of Quality. Knowledge Management in Form of development, refinement or invention of Production Practices requires also to take the holistic view of the complete production route and to work with probabilities at the gateway between production units. Probabilities here mean that a heats characteristics will make it more or less probable to the following production step to be able to again produce a intermediate product that has high probability of being turned into the end product of specified characteristics.

Communications exceeding simple forwarding of electronic data structures representing heat information from one production units Automation or IT System to the following production unit into the complete production route are the next area of application in active Knowledge Management. Communications of the Operating Personnel of the complete production route are vital to enable active Knowledge creation. Instead of island behaviour of the individual production units the human individuals better form a common system, as the production route and its Technology already does. Through this the tacit knowledge of every Individual in the plants operation, the knowledge that resides in the heads, will get allowed to emerge in changing practices between these. No single technology is more flexible than we humans working in cooperation and collaboration.

Knowledge itself is created by Individuals, a organization or technology by itself is unable to create Knowledge on its own without Individuals. For the Organization it is to be the platform and the basis to stimulate and support the knowledge-creating activities of the individual and to provide the fitting contexts for them.  Organizational Knowledge creation is then the process that lets emerge this type of knowledge from these Individuals into the higher organizational context and this requires cooperation and collaboration at first. Anything added to it, may it be Organizational Structure or Technology is better to be a helper for this. Dialog, Disagreement and considerable Conflict allow to question estabilished thinking and knowledge and to make sense of the personal experiences in a new way. This dynamic interaction facilitates the transformation of tacit knowledge of Individuals into Organizational Knowledge.