By Dr. Aruna Shekar,Senior Lecturer in Product Development, Massey University
What is Lean Product Development?
‘Lean’ product development means many different things, including terms such as reducing waste, offering customer value, enhancing flow, being led by a chief engineer, cross-functionality and concurrent engineering. It is also referred to as a ‘holistic’ approach to new product development (NPD) and a philosophy for the entire organisation. “A lean organization understands what value means—for a specific customer at a specific point in time” James Womack.
The principles of “lean” management implemented in Toyota’s manufacturing, enabled the company to achieve high levels of profitability. Similar methods were employed upstream in product development with amazing benefits to the company, and hence the rapid attention worldwide on this subject.
However, it must be remembered that the context of product development has an influence on development. The environment and history of Toyota are unique, hence firms must be careful to adapt and customize methods to suit their own industry culture and product type. In order to continuously improve product quality, time-to-market and reduce costs, we strive to find ways of doing things better and doing the right thing. Toyota has provided some (lean) ideas on achieving this, now learn from our own…Fisher & Paykel Appliances!
We recently read the book: ‘Ready, Set, Dominate’, by Michael Kennedy, which has an interesting Chapter on Fisher & Paykel’s Appliances “Learning First Product Development”.
F&P’s Quality Manager, Colin Gilchrist, is leading the implementation of this emerging philosophy within their company. At the upcoming PDMA-NZ event he is going to share their experiences on this new journey. Be sure to attend and listen to the experiences of a world-class iconic company’s challenges and successes. There can be important lessons in product development for you and your company!
Where can I read more about it?
Remember that there are a number of resources available to members of PDMA. PDMA’s Body of Knowledge (BOK) and the Visions magazine provide interesting case studies and practical tools for industrial innovation. Visions helps practitioners stay on top of trends and tools in the field of NPD in order to improve their own company’s success in innovation.
The special issue on Toyota’s secrets are in the recent Visions magazine of July 2009: http://www.visions-digital.com/visions/200907.
Some books on Lean Product Development:
- Ready, Set, Dominate: Implement Toyota's Set-based Learning for Developing Products and Nobody Can Catch You - Michael Kennedy
- Learning to See: Value Stream Mapping to Add Value and Eliminate MUDA - Mike Rother
- The Lean Product Development Guidebook: Everything Your Design Team Needs to Improve Efficiency and Slash Time to Market - Ronald Mascitelli
- Lean product and process development, Allen C. Ward
- Managing to learn: using the a3 management process to solve problems, gain agreement, mentor, & lead, by John Shook
- The Machine that changed the World by James P.Womack, Daniel T.Jones, Daniel Roos
