Fisher & Paykel has been designing home appliance products since 1934 and has grown into a global company. The idea to change its product development started to develop in 2005, by exploring options that could help the company solve the challenges it was facing and render it faster to the market. Fisher & Paykel truly wanted to break from the traditional patterns of continuously improving...
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The implementation of any new approach, tool or method can be difficult, because it represents a change, and a change means people need to adjust to a new way of doing things. This is especially true and can have significant implications for an organization, in the case where a change is big and spans business-wide. In 2010 Siemens Building Technologies embarked on a way to...
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To ensure the engagement of all employees in the implementation of Lean Product Development, Siemens Building Technologies, one of the world’s leading companies in building automation, fire safety, and building security, developed and put in place a formal training model. This article explains how the company developed their Lean Training Model which was, and still is, used to educate and align the organization to follow the...
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People are one of the three crucial elements of any successful lean product development; the more knowledge employees have, the quicker lean concepts can be implemented. In the case of Herrero Builders, developing appropriate competencies and skills in the organisation ranked so high, that the company created a department of learning right at the beginning of their lean journey. Herrero Builders crafted a Lean concepts...
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Interface is a modular carpet manufacturer from LaGrange, Georgia, USA that started its Lean Product Development Journey as part of the new sustainability business strategy, a Directive Mission Zero established by its chairman and CEO in 1994. To succeed in providing the most desired solutions to the customers, institutional knowledge is one of the most important resources the company needs. Interface has streamlined its processes...
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Lean Product Development is a paradigmatic approach for new product development that has surfaced in 1990s, which elements, tools and methods have been widely applied across companies around the world and benefits were described by many. However, most companies highlight one particular area as being the foremost challenge in implementing lean in product development and innovation; the human behavior or the mindset of employees across...
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During its lean transformation Munters, a global leader in energy efficient air treatment solutions, underwent a strategy deployment exercise. They needed a way to consistently, simply and quickly capture and communicate policies (vision, mission, goals) between different levels. They found the answer in an A3 Thinking. A3 thinking is primarily a problem-solving approach that uses a single standard A3 format sheet of paper to guide, capture...
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Interface, based in LaGrange, Georgia, USA and the world’s largest manufacturer and marketer of modular carpets, kicked-off its new sustainability business strategy Mission Zero in 1994, established by its chairman and CEO. As part of the Mission Zero, Interface also launched the Lean Product Development Journey aiming to continuously improve the end to end product development process to reach the Mission Zero’s goal by 2020. Interface...
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Winterthur Gas & Diesel (WinGD), a Winterthur, Switzerland-based developer of 2-stroke low-speed Gas and Diesel engines used for propulsion power in merchant shipping, began its lean product development journey in 2011. Through its journey, the company learnt quickly and established best practices in several aspects of lean product development. Waste elimination is part of lean improvements and WinGD wants everybody in the company to understand...
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Interface, a modular carpet manufacturer from LaGrange, Georgia, USA started its Lean Product Development Journey as part of the new sustainability business strategy, a Directive Mission Zero established by its chairman and CEO in 1994. [su_spacer size="20"] To streamline the product development processes, Interface conducted Value Stream Mapping (VSM) workshops revealing several improvement opportunities enabling them to build an action plan to improve their product development process. [su_spacer...
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