Abstract: It is known that there is significant profit gain if the production knowledge is well-managed. The objective of this paper is to analyze the knowledge flow for the production process of an ignition coil in a company. By using the value stream mapping technique, the current and future state diagrams of the knowledge flow are drawn, which reveal the existing flaws in knowledge management for the production process. Then, based on the knowledge flow analysis, the production process is redesigned such that the process is continuous and the level of knowledge coding is increased. Consequently, information barrage is eliminated, line balance is increased by 223%, and knowledge flow cycle is shortened by 20 days. This is a significant improvement. Although the analysis is done for a case problem, the method can be applied to other production processes.

Key words:  production process, knowledge flow, value stream mapping