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...
Read More
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...
Read More
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...
Read More
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...
Read More
In the second half of 2013, CMI Defence, a weapons systems manufacturer from Belgium, started to explore Set-Based Concurrent Engineering (SBCE), its advantages, principles and tools associated with the approach. This is not the first time CMI Defence came across SBCE, but it was the first time they committed to it. The implementation was kicked-off at the engineering department, later followed by a first round...
Read More
Technology, businesses and market changes are so fast nowadays that product development needs to be extremely adaptable or it risks a failure. To accommodate to this situation, CMI Defence, a Belgium weapon systems specialist, implemented a flexible project management approach which is based on the agile methodology. While the traditional project management uses the waterfall model where each phase of a product’s life cycle takes...
Read More
Continuous growth and market demanding shorter development times, lead CMI Defence, a weapon systems manufacturer from Belgium, to transform its product development approach. In 2013, the company embarked on its Lean Product Development journey by setting up for lean. This initial step aimed at producing a strategic roadmap for the implementation of different lean product development enablers to systematically develop, implement and roll-out several smaller...
Read More
Value Stream Mapping (VSM) is one of the key methodologies used to start a lean journey. It has been successfully applied in manufacturing processes and is now becoming increasingly used in the innovation and product development processes to reduce cycle time and identify improvement opportunities. It also provides a simple and quick way to visualize all activities that deliver value and eliminate those that generate waste.
