"Can lean principles help product development?"
by Ajai Vasudevan, Automotive Solutions Practice Leader
In response to my earlier post on automotive industry, a reader asked the above question.
I think, at a level of abstraction, the basic lean manufacturing principles of abolishing waste (muda) apply to Product Development as well. However manufacturing processes are largely unidirectional and recurring while Product Development processes are iterative and are to a certain extent unique for each new product. Hence the tools and methodologies for identifying waste and addressing it have to be different. Of late a number of good books have emerged on the topic of lean Product Development that illustrates some pertinent tools and methodologies. The Lean Enterprise Institute of MIT has also conducted copious research on the topic. So we can expect more excitement on this topic in the time to come.
On a related note, we are seeing the adoption of lean methodologies to software development emerge very quickly. Drawing a parallel between product development and software development, we can definitely see the trend increasing in the near future where components of lean will merge with existing development methodologies.
Another core area of merging of these principles is the adoption of agile methodologies to drive consistent improvement (Kaizen) and we believe all these streams will eventually merge in the near future.
Comments
The concept of cutting down wastes in the automotive industry is an age old thing through TPM (Japanese Way) and 6 Sigma (American way) methodologies. OEMs that have long focussed on cutting wastes in the shop floor are now extending the concept in supply chain (in bound and outbound areas) and product development areas. PLM Technologies combined with things like value engineering is helping firms to cut down on development costs.
In response to your earlier blog on firms taking up design work in developed nations, it is obvious that more than 70% of the cost is frozen in the design stage and it makes logical sense for firms to employ talent to cut costs on a long-term basis.
Posted by: venkat | December 31, 2007 05:43 AM
Product development in automotive has changed considerably over the years and TTM (time to Market) has reduced. Most companies use 'concurrent development process' and 'aggregate designing and sourcing' to cut down the TTM but more and more companies now are adopting Lean Design Process(refer my blog on Nano for e.g.) and are successful in bringing down the cost. Lean Design helps not only reduce the cost of product development but also productionising cost using lean manufactuing principles, the other way of looking at this is it is DFP (Design For Profit).
Posted by: Naveen Malhotra | January 18, 2008 06:15 AM