3P: Production Preparation Process

Lean Manufacturing Series

2009 Factory Strategies Group LLC. All rights reserved.

Outline
What is 3P? Why do 3P? The method
Team Selection Define Product or Process Design Objectives/Needs Diagramming Find Alternatives Build, Present, and Select Process Prototypes Hold Design Review Develop Project Implementation plan

2009 Factory Strategies Group LLC. All rights reserved.

What is 3P?
Production Preparation Process (3P) is one part of an overall Lean design approach that includes QFD, design reviews, and post-start up monitoring by a cross functional team to kaizen any bugs in the new system. The benefits of Production Preparation Process are a crossfunctional team approach, rapid testing of ideas and the embedding of Lean manufacturing principles into process and product design. One of the most powerful and transformative advanced manufacturing tools, and it is typically only used by organizations that have experience implementing other lean methods. Whereas kaizen and other lean methods take a production process as a given and seek to make improvements, the Production Preparation Process (3P) focuses on eliminating waste through product and process design. 3P seeks to meet customer requirements by starting with a clean product development slate to rapidly create and test potential product and process designs that require the least time, material, and capital resources. This method typically involves a diverse group of individuals in a multi-day creative process to identify several alternative ways to meet the customer's needs using different product or process designs.
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Why Do 3P?
Most people do 3P to solve one or more of these pains with new product start up. Some do it to minimize equipment cost or to design processes to enable one-piece flow. If you have these pains, you can make a rule to use Production Preparation Process whenever you see one of the top 5 reasons:
New product development. Educate designers in Lean as early as possible. Capital expenditure approval. Don't sign a Cap Ex without doing 3P first. Period. Product design changes. Approve no changes without a 3P review. Significant changes in volume. You didn't design the process Lean, but here's your second chance. Relocation of processes. If you're going to pick it up and move it anyway, you might as well Lean it out first.
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3P Method
With 3P, the teams spend several days (with singular focus on the 3P event) working to develop multiple alternatives for each process step and evaluating each alternative against manufacturing criteria (e.g., designated takt time) and a preferred cost. The 16 Catch Phrases of 3P are used as guidelines for designing processes according to Lean manufacturing principles of JIT (Takt, Flow, Pull) and Jidoka. As a result of a successful 3P workshop following the 16 Catch Phrases the equipment and production process you design should take you closer to TPS.

2009 Factory Strategies Group LLC. All rights reserved.

3P Method
The goal is typically to develop a process or product design that meets customer requirements best in the "least waste way". The typical steps in a 3P event are described below.
Define Product or Process Design Objectives/Needs Diagramming Find Alternatives Build, Present, and Select Process Prototypes Hold Design Review Develop Project Implementation plan

2009 Factory Strategies Group LLC. All rights reserved.

Method: Find Alternatives

Sub-teams are formed to draw different ways to accomplish the process in question. Each of the sketches is evaluated and the best is chosen (along with any good features from the sketches that are not chosen) for a mock-up.

2009 Factory Strategies Group LLC. All rights reserved.