Value Lean Product Development Waste

The contest for customers and Waste is anything that does not add value to the customer. The goal of
technological development forces Aligning people to an optimal sequence of actions lean product development is therefore to eliminate waste. Lean defines
Lean
in motion a continual increase in that provide maximum value for customers. the seven most common types of waste as overproduction, trans-
value for all products and services. portation, waiting, processing, inventory, unnecessary movement and

Value
The ability of your organization to Product development is the set of activities begin- defects. In product development most of the waste is related to the
maintain the pace in the race and Product creation, communication, documentation and management of
ning with the perception of a market opportunity
create an unrivalled level of value Development and ending in the production, sale, and delivery information. Following table gives an overview of waste that is
for its customers will determine Time influenced by product development:
10
9
11 12 1
2
3
of a product or service.
profitability and growth. 8
7 6 5
4

Lean Product Development can be divided into four main Type of waste Potential Tools or methods
Customer value is defined as the relationship between the satis- activities:
faction of needs the customer gains from a product and the total Waste in the product High First wave lean
• discover the value opportunity
expenditure in time, money and other efforts generated by obtaining • develop a product that satisfies the customer needs of the value • unneeded functionality • TQM
and using this product. opportunity • too many parts • Robust Design
• communicate the value of your product to the customer and • unnecessary tolerances • Six Sigma
Satisfaction of needs
Customer value = close the deal
Use of resources • produce and deliver the product to the customer. Waste in the process Medium Second wave lean
(time, money, efforts)
• rework • Visual Planning
Responsibility for these activities rests with different functional • waiting times • DMAIC
To provide a working tool, the concept of customer value within an departments in your company. Deficiencies in the way these
organization must be turned into a concrete, measurable element • information losses • Pulse rooms
activities are executed leads to losses of customer value. Some of
that can be put to practical use guiding an organization towards these deficiencies will result in fire fighting activities. The objective
success for customers, employees and shareholders alike. is to create a company culture in which the striving to attain Waste in the business Very high Third wave lean
unrivalled customer value and reducing waste is deeply • loss of market shares • Value engineering
embedded. A common mind set needs to be developed if lean is to • loss of company image • Innovation
Flow be realized and not just remain a cliché. • low profit margin • Money bags
Promise of knowledge The project portfolio is like a container
Promise of performance
to be filled with a good balance of

Waste
different types of activities. Deficiencies Pull

Waste
in the product development process

Value potential
Promise to the market
If you push to many activities into the
development development

resulting in fire fighting activities will

Waste
Firefigthing
Market

always have the highest priority. The product development system you will:

Waste
project portfolio is therefore filled from • create bottlenecks

Waste
the bottom and up with long-term • increase the fragmentation.
Product

initiatives at the top. The quality of the

Communicate
work performed at the top levels will in Firstly, tasks will pile up at the bottle-
Promise to a customer the long run decide the size of the necks leading to increased lead time. At
Discover

Value
worst the bottlenecks become so tight

Develop
lower levels. If the fire fighting activities

Deliver
Promise of problem fixing that efficiency within the system reaches
become too many too little room will be
left over for long-term initiatives. unacceptably low levels.

The total number of projects that
can be carried out is limited by the
resources and the knowledge at
your disposal. The flow lead-time
Secondly, every transition from one task to another is an adjustment
that demands resources. Many individuals currently working within
Time product development complain about being constantly torn between
Limitations in one task and another. Reaching the end of the day without having had
Number of projects

knowledge any time over for value-creating activities.

for a project is the sum of the time

when value is supplied, and the
idle time when no value is
supplied. The idle time is a
function of the planned capacity
utilization in product development,
the variability in work volume as
well as the variability in process
capacity. The following equation
defines the connection:
www.valuemodel.se or .com
The work involved is simplified and made more effective if your
organization can release itself from traditional ways of thinking, in Lean is to some extent about learning to "see". Many of the tools and
the form of technical solutions. Instead of getting bogged down in methods are therefore about visualization as a mean to replace a push
concrete and technical details, focus must be placed on defining condition with pull. Create an informative workspace where you can
Limitations
what the product has to do, from a customer perspective. A higher, see how the projects are going at a glance and where downstream
in resources
abstract level is required in order to see the whole picture. The activities pull the result from upstream activities. At company level you
Potential Projects information to be managed extends through the four different need to see all the projects, bottlenecks and the degree of
projects in execution levels of information concretization called needs, functions, fragmentation. At project level it should be organized around the three
Queue time Sv + Sc Pl Cap Util solutions and processes. This demands a new way of thinking and viewpoints of time, task and team. Much of lean is plain common
=
Process time 2 1- Pl Cap Util a new mind set that everybody involved in product development sense. However common sense is not necessarily common practice.
must embrace.

Copyright Value Model 2009, All rights reserved