Siemens as a global player with 380,000 employees is mobilizing to make its knowhow and experiences directly available to staff and partners. One approach to knowledge management is to develop a powerful interface for visualizing and accessing large and complex sources of information. The context analyzer KOAN is a component for an information retrieval framework, providing a basis for commercialization and distribution of knowledge. KOAN can also be applied as a component for diagnosis tools to analyze the performance of complex systems, such as plants and production processes. The system is implemented for Windows NT/95 as stand alone tool and with current internet technology, using a standard browser and the device independent graphics language VRML2.0.