Lean New Product Development

Lean New Product Developement

«My experience in the design of world champion motorcycles taught me that an excellent Technical Design Department must follow a few basic principles: the presence of very good Team leaders, a solid team spirit, a very high motivation, the capacity to react quickly, a very good relationship with all the other areas of the company. In a word the Technical Design Department should work according to Lean principles exactly as any other part of the company»

Gaetano Cocco
Senior Expert for Lean, Innovation and New Product Development

In order to make a product development process Lean we must work on a number of aspects.

First of all on people in order to increase not only their professional skills, but also their motivation and their teamwork attitude. Particularly important is the selection, motivation and training of team leaders.

Another important aspect are processes. In order to make them leaner it is necessary to use correct methodologies both for Product Conception (selection of potentially successful products) and for Technical Design (process that transform the idea of a product into a saleable article).

Both these processes require the involvement not only of Technical Designers, but of all areas especially Marketing and Manufacturing. As for Technical Design, it must be managed as a flow capable to bring out new products in the shortest possible time.

A third important aspect is that of tools. Technical designers must have at their disposal effective and up to date software and they must use practical, simple methodologies based on visual planning and control systems.

A last aspect is the use of a performance evaluation system which measures the performance of Technical Design in terms of efficiency, effectiveness, proactive attitude and impact on profitability.

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Better product selection: instead of putting on the market a large number of products hoping against hope that at least a few of them are successful, it is better to select only those products which, according to the opinion of Managers of different Areas, can meet market expectations.

Reduction of time to market: once the products to be designed are selected, Technical Design can work as if it were a production flow and time to market can be drastically reduced.

Reduction of technical modifications: as products are designed according to a correct method, the number of technical modifications, which often make designers’ work dispersive and difficult to organize, is drastically reduced.

Performance control: the use of performance indicators makes it possible to evaluate the work of the Technical Design Department and promotes continuous improvement.

In these last few years we have carried out many successful projects of Lean Transformation and we have proposed many training events on Lean tools and methods during which we use advanced Lean games and present real cases of Lean Transformation projects.

Training – Master Classes and Workshops on Innovation and Lean New Product Development

GC&P proposes periodically Master Classes and Workshops on Innovation and Lean New Product Development, advanced courses based on two very intense days of theoretical and practical lessons during which our experts explain methods and tools of Lean New Product Development. Our events can be held for a single company or a group of companies.

Topics of the last Workshop on Innovation and Lean New Product Development

Consulting

Our experts can analyze a company’s Technical Design Area and identify possible improvement actions. We also help companies carry out their improvement plans and we teach their people the best methodologies for planning and managing product development projects.

Temporary Management

When a client is in need of a person to run its Technical Design Department for a period of time, we can assume the role of Temporary Managers. In this case our role is that of running the area and at the same time to identify and train the person who will take over after the end of our mandate.

Our experts

Senior Expert for Lean, Innovation and New Product Development
Consultant for Lean, Innovation and New Product Development