Proceedings of the 12th European Conference on Knowledge ...

Eva-Maria Kern et al
Figure 2: Traditional value stream mapping (Ro<strong>the</strong>r/Shook 2000)
The result <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> mapping is transparency about <strong>the</strong> value stream, about significant points containing
waste and about <strong>the</strong> corresponding amount <strong>of</strong> waste. This is <strong>the</strong> basis <strong>of</strong> optimization. As soon as
initial process improvements have been realized, <strong>the</strong> cycle starts anew: upon mapping <strong>the</strong> changed
current state, a new target state is determined and subsequently implemented in order to get closer to
perfection (Ro<strong>the</strong>r/Shook 2000).
The traditional production factor labor is considered in a direct way, whereas land is not taken into
account directly. It is implicitly included by mapping inventories between individual process steps, thus
considering <strong>the</strong> respective space requirement. As a result, conclusions can be drawn about a possible
waste <strong>of</strong> land.
The production factor capital can also be taken into account with <strong>the</strong> help <strong>of</strong> an adapted form <strong>of</strong> value
stream mapping, referred to as cost-oriented value stream planning (Balsliemke 2008).
Summing up, it can be concluded that up to this day <strong>the</strong>re are relatively fully developed approaches to
take all production factors into account in value stream mapping, apart from knowledge. Only for
knowledge <strong>the</strong> integration is still in its early stages (e.g. Kern/Boppert 2010, Fiechter et al. 2011).
A suitable basis for a value-oriented knowledge-integrating analysis and design <strong>of</strong> business
processes should meet two elementary criteria: It has to facilitate a value-oriented analysis and
design <strong>of</strong> business processes and it has to <strong>of</strong>fer <strong>the</strong> possibility <strong>of</strong> explicitly integrating and depicting
knowledge elements. Being an established lean management tool visualizing resource consumption
during value creation from <strong>the</strong> process perspective, value stream mapping clearly is suitable for
analyzing and designing processes in a value-oriented way with respect to <strong>the</strong> traditional production
factors. Knowledge aspects can be examined and documented separately for each process step,
while <strong>the</strong> flexible graphical representation provides <strong>the</strong> possibility for integrating and depicting
knowledge elements. Thus, value stream mapping can be considered a suitable basis for a valueoriented
knowledge-integrating analysis and design <strong>of</strong> business processes.
4. Potential benefits and challenges <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> integration <strong>of</strong> knowledge into
value stream mapping
The benefits <strong>of</strong> integrating <strong>the</strong> factor knowledge into value stream mapping would be expected in <strong>the</strong>
field <strong>of</strong> knowledge identification and visualization:
By integrating <strong>the</strong> factor knowledge into a value stream map, actual knowledge processes for each
process step can be distinctly identified. The detailed process representation facilitates <strong>the</strong> detailed
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