What is Lean Product and Process Development?

A business system focused on eliminating waste in product and process development through the generation and application of useful knowledge.

It is centered on four fundamental pillars:

1. Grow responsible expert teams: organize around the product and process technology that is fundamental to the organization’s competitive advantage. These units develop useful knowledge in their respective areas of expertise, and increase the number of people who can apply this knowledge, generate new knowledge and communicate this knowledge effectively to members of cross-functional teams.

2. Support entrepreneurial system designers: give leadership of development projects to technically capable and visionary people who have an entrepreneurial spirit. They provide integrative knowledge to leverage the knowledge of the expert teams in the innovation of new products and production processes. See: Chief Engineer.

3. Follow set-based concurrent engineering practices with multiple alternatives: avoid the trap of locking into design solutions too early by: (a) exploring multiple alternatives simultaneously; (b) aggressively evaluating the alternatives to eliminate weak ideas.

4. Establish cadence, flow and pull: apply lean production principles to increase the introduction of new projects into the development organization, eliminate waste in information flows, and pull development activities according to the needs of specific projects. (Adapted from Ward, 2011).