Lean Product Development
Lean is a concept that stemmed from the world of manufacturing, Toyota’s ground breaking invention of the Toyota Production System was to change the focus from the use and utilisation of individual machines to the work flow from the total process, it also focused on reducing cost, enhancing quality and increasing throughput so that customer needs are met. Traditionally Lean has been used on the shop floor in production lines. Today, we are seeing more and more businesses using Lean to manage work in product development before it ever hits the floor.
What is Lean Product Development
Lean Product Development is a process of designing new products that improve the lives of customers by incorporating the seven Lean thinking concepts – Eliminating Waste, Create Knowledge, build quality in, deliver fast by managing flow, defer commitment, respect people and optimise the whole. The main aim of lean product development is to address the following issues
- Reduction of long development cycle times
- Reducing the high cost of development
- The need for more innovative solutions
- Reduction of production costs
- Redevelopment cycles
Principles of Lean Product Development
As the focus of Lean Product Development is on innovation and the creation of new products, there are 5 core principles that we can incorporate as part of this process
- Define Value to the customer – Voice of the customer is essential throughout the development cycle of the product, we need to ensure the customer needs are built into the product specifications and plans, minimise waste by reducing high cost, poor quality and re-use designs where ever possible. It is also important to develop more optimal solutions to maximise customer value. Set-based design looks at other alternatives in parallel until a proper solution emerges.
- Identify the Value stream and reduce waste – The development process should be streamlined, the key is to avoid unnecessary processes and procedures, use value streams to eliminate waste. Organise the workplace and data in such a way that is it easy to find information and minimise the time needed to perform development activities. Establishing a common way of doing things by standardizing our work. Integration of design tools ensures cycle time is reduced.
- Make the value creating steps flow – The key is to manage the pipeline by not overloading it and preventing buildup of product development work-in-process and queue time. Work needs to be pulled when resources are available in this case there will be very little work that is incomplete. Reduce the batch size through standardization and platform development which allows a smoother flow and level staffing. Defer commitment where appropriate to keep options open and respond to change.
- Empower the team – Setup a team which improves communication, coordination and collaboration especially when collocated as a workcell. Empower the team to self-organise and plan their own projects and determine how to best provide value to the customer. Ensure the team has the right number of people, at the right times and with the right skills and experience to enable lean product development
- Learn and Improve – Create a learning culture by capturing knowledge, organizing knowledge and information and making it readily available to others to avoid costly and time-consuming re-learning. Establish a lessons learnt database which can be referred to when developing new products.
Lean product development if successfully implemented within an organisation should increase innovation, reduce cost and waste while delivering a product that fulfills customer needs.