Case Study:
Quality Management Wiki for KWA

Customer

The Kuratorium Wohnen im Alter (KWA) is a non-profit corporation founded about 50 years ago, specializing in assisted living for older adults. KWA operates in five German states – Bavaria, Baden-Württemberg, Berlin, Hesse, and North Rhine-Westphalia – offering diverse living arrangements from residential care to upscale day care, catering to various needs. With a team of around 2,500 employees, KWA serves approximately 2,800 residents, making it the second-largest operator of residential care facilities in Germany. Various certifications play an increasingly important role in many areas of KWA to secure and optimize standards and processes.

Project

The Kuratorium Wohnen im Alter (KWA) is ISO-certified and must therefore implement and document strict process requirements. DokuWiki was already a central element in quality management, but its usage was suboptimal and needed to be intensified and made more efficient through a relaunch.

The project's goal was to integrate the wiki more comprehensively into quality management and standardize the handling of QM documents. A particular focus was on clearly defining responsibilities and permissions across the organization. Initial problems included insufficient knowledge among employees in using the wiki, complicated table management, difficulties in ensuring content was up-to-date, and lack of responsibilities. All these challenges meant that the wiki only partially met the requirements of efficient quality management.

Implementation

CosmoCode conducted the relaunch of the KWA wiki in several phases, following the ICKE approach. In the concept and analysis phase, the documentation was restructured and appropriate wiki tools were selected. During the evaluation phase, a wiki prototype was provided for stakeholder approvals. Finally, CosmoCode accompanied the rollout of the new wiki, trained employees in using the new functions, and provided support for questions and adjustments.

The refreshed KWA wiki is available to employees from different locations, offering each site its own section with specific entry points. This allows employees to quickly and efficiently find regionally relevant information and documents. Additionally, the wiki contains company-wide information managed centrally that is important for all locations. This structure supports the standardization and unification of information and processes while still meeting the individual needs of each site.

Document control is a central aspect of quality management at Kuratorium Wohnen im Alter (KWA). To maintain high standards and certifications, guideline and evidence documents must be carefully maintained and consistently managed. For this, CosmoCode primarily uses the Struct, Watchcycle, Acknowledge, and Do plugins. Struct helps represent and link structured data, making document management significantly easier. Watchcycle monitors the lifecycle of documents, ensuring they are regularly reviewed and updated. Acknowledge ensures that employees have acknowledged important documents, and the Do plugin assists in assigning and managing tasks arising from these documents. This increases the efficiency and reliability of document maintenance, from recording to regular review, and ensures that all quality requirements are transparently and traceably adhered to throughout the organization.

Integration with Active Directory was a critical aspect for KWA, as central user information was needed not only for authentication and authorization but also for managing phone lists, document lists, and approval lists. This led to significant performance issues in the existing integration, noticeable in long loading times. By using and further developing the PureLDAP plugin, CosmoCode was able to significantly resolve these bottlenecks. Optimizations included caching user information and improving communication with the Active Directory server, greatly enhancing access speed and user experience in the KWA wiki.

A significant focus was placed on improving the search function in the existing DokuWiki. To increase user-friendliness and deliver more relevant search results, the tagging system was expanded and optimized. Through the implementation of advanced tag clustering, users can now refine their search results more precisely with specific tags, greatly improving the findability of important documents. Additionally, improved search criteria ensure that particularly important pages are prioritized in the quick search list, systematically easing daily work in the wiki.

Overall, the renewed wiki now provides a reliable and user-friendly platform to support KWA's quality standards.