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Lean product development (LPD) is a lean approach to counter the challenges of
product development In business and engineering, new product development (NPD) covers the complete process of bringing a new product to market, renewing an existing product or introducing a product in a new market. A central aspect of NPD is product design, along w ...
, notably: * Lack of innovative solutions * Long development cycle times * Many redevelopment cycles * High development costs * Long production cycle times * High
production cost Cost of goods sold (COGS) is the carrying value of goods sold during a particular period. Costs are associated with particular goods using one of the several formulas, including specific identification, first-in first-out (FIFO), or average cost. ...
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See also

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Design for lean manufacturing Design for lean manufacturing is a process for applying lean concepts to the design phase of a system, such as a complex product or process. The term describes methods of design in lean manufacturing companies as part of the study of Japanese ind ...
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Muntzing Muntzing is the practice and technique of reducing the components inside an electronic appliance to the minimum required for it to function. The term is named after the man who invented it, Earl "Madman" Muntz, a car and electronics salesman who wa ...
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Toyota Production System The Toyota Production System (TPS) is an integrated socio-technical system, developed by Toyota, that comprises its management philosophy and practices. The TPS is a management system that organizes manufacturing and logistics for the automobile ...


History of lean product development

Toyota is a Japanese multinational automotive manufacturer headquartered in Toyota City, Aichi, Japan. It was founded by Kiichiro Toyoda and incorporated on . Toyota is one of the largest automobile manufacturers in the world, producing about 10 ...
started its journey with lean product development at Toyota Loom Works (see
History of Toyota The history of Toyota started in 1933 with the company being a division of Toyoda Automatic Loom Works devoted to the production of cars under the direction of the founder's son, Kiichiro Toyoda. Kiichiro Toyoda had traveled to Europe and the ...
). Their early approach is notably different from Lean manufacturing that became famous through the book " The Machine that changed the world". When Toyota started manufacturing cars, there was a difference in manufacturing conditions between Japan and the USA. Toyota had few educated engineers and little prior experience. Car companies in US employed a well-educated work force in the cities and benefited from the research and student skill-sets of established engineering schools. To tackle this shortfall in knowledge and experience, Toyota conducted an incremental approach to development that built on their existing knowledge and became the basis of the lean systems Toyota uses today. Allen Ward studied Toyota’s lean product development system and found parallels with the US
airplane industry An aerospace manufacturer is a company or individual involved in the various aspects of designing, building, testing, selling, and maintaining aircraft, aircraft parts, missiles, rockets, or spacecraft. Aerospace is a high technology indust ...
. For instance, the Wright brothers’ method of constructing their airplanes became one of the legacies they passed on to the aviation industry. This approach enabled the USA to create one of World War II's most successful fighter planes from scratch in the short span of six months. After the war, Toyota incorporated many of the airline industry's findings into its own product development methodology.


Differences between lean product development and lean production

While some basic principles and guidelines are applicable across Lean product development and
Lean production Lean manufacturing is a production method aimed primarily at reducing times within the production system as well as response times from suppliers and to customers. It is closely related to another concept called just-in-time manufacturing (J ...
(such as waste reduction), many applications of lean process for development have focused more on the production approach. The purpose of production is to manufacture products reliably within margins of control. The flow of value is physically evident, and the link between cause and effect is easy to see. For example, feedback on adjusting the speed of production is immediately realized in an increase or decrease in rejected items. Any decisions made must be based on best practice. On the other hand, the purpose of product development is to design new products that improve the lives of customers. This is a complex space where the flow of value can only be discerned at an abstract level and where cause and effect might be separated by time and space. For example, feedback on the decision to design a certain feature will not be received until the product has been built and is in the hands of the customer. This means that decisions are made on short-cycle experimentation, prototyping, set-based design, and emergent practice. A premium is placed on creating reusable knowledge and reducing risk at handover points. An essential point about these differences is summarized in the advice Jim Womack gives Harley Davidson: "''Don't try to bring lean manufacturing upstream to product development. The application of Lean in product development and manufacturing are different. Some aspects may look similar, but they are not! Be leery of an expert with experience in lean manufacturing that claims to know product development''" The most common high level concepts associated with lean product development are: # Creation of re-usable knowledge. Knowledge is created and maintained so that it can be leveraged for successive products or iterations. # Set-based
concurrent engineering Concurrent engineering (CE) or concurrent design and manufacturing is a work methodology emphasizing the parallelization of tasks (i.e. performing tasks concurrently), which is sometimes called simultaneous engineering or integrated product develo ...
. Different stages of product development run simultaneously rather than consecutively to decrease development time, improve productivity, and reduce costs. # Teams of responsible experts. Lean product development organizations develop cross-functional teams and reward competence building in teams and individuals. # Cadence and pull. Managers of lean product development organizations develop autonomous teams, where engineers plan their own work and work their own plans. # Visual management.
Visualization Visualization or visualisation may refer to: * Visualization (graphics), the physical or imagining creation of images, diagrams, or animations to communicate a message * Data visualization, the graphic representation of data * Information visuali ...
is a main enabler of lean product development. # Entrepreneurial system designer. The lean product development organization makes one person responsible for the engineering and aesthetic design, and market and business success, of the product. # Flow management.


Results of lean product development

Lean product development has been claimed to produce the following results: * Increase innovation ten-foldAllen Ward - Lean Product and Process Development * Increase introduction of new products 400%-500% Companies such as Toyota can attribute their success to lean product development. In 2000, Toyota launched 14 new products, a larger product line than GM's entire product offering. At that point, Toyota had just 70,000 employees while GM had more than five times as many.


Applicability of lean product development

Researchers divide product development projects accordingly to their need drivers: * Wished: there is no such product on the market, only a wish for such a product. These projects can be on the edge of what is possible to do. * Wanted: there are only a few basic similar products on the market that usually require improvement. * Needed: there are enough products in existence so knowledge about this is abundant on the market. For example, the mobile phone was a ''Wanted'' product in the 1990s because it was on the leading edge of technology. Today it is regarded as a ''Needed'' product. It is common in the market. There is enough knowledge in the public domain so that even small companies can make a good mobile phone. Product development methods can be classified according to whether they are focused on handling stable or non-stable conditions. Lean product development is a dynamic method of product development that handles unstable conditions. The influence of need drivers and stability (or lack of stability) on product development are illustrated in the table below.


Related concepts

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Lean startup Lean startup is a methodology for developing businesses and products that aims to shorten product development cycles and rapidly discover if a proposed business model is viable; this is achieved by adopting a combination of business- hypothesis-d ...
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Lean project management Lean project management is the application of lean concepts such as lean construction, lean manufacturing and lean thinking to project management. Lean project management has many ideas in common with other lean concepts; however, the main pr ...


Notes and references

Exchange ref 12 with: Ottosson, S. (2016): Developing Sustainable Product Innovations, page 112{{Full citation needed, date=September 2018 Design Environmental design Lean manufacturing Product development