Successes in lean manufacture have led researchers and practitioners to consider extending 'lean' to different parts of the engineering enterprise, including product and process development (PPD). Lean product development (PD) has been understood to mean lean manufacture applied to PD, while the roots of lean PDjust like lean manufacture-go back to Toyota. This paper presents the methodology adopted in order to pave the way towards a coherent lean PD model that combines lessons from the Toyota PD system (TPDS) with other best practises. The paper provides a unique review of the lean PD research area, and a reference framework for the enablers that Toyota has employed for lean PD. An investigation of five engineering enterprises undertaken to search for evidence of the implementation of lean PD enablers through observation, document analysis and interviews is also presented. Some enablers have been informally applied, while few have been formally implemented, and no model was found to formally combine Lean PD enablers into a coherent whole. This is the first paper to critique attempts to describe lean PD and provide a definition for Lean PD.
This article presents a transformation process towards lean product development in an aerospace industry. This transformation was achieved in two main stages: the first was to integrate the principles of set-based concurrent engineering into an existing product development model of an aerospace company. This stage included defining activities and associated tools. The second stage was to implement the developed model in a research-based industrial case study, a helicopter engine in this case. Three main outcomes were realised from this work. First, it presented an industrial case of lean transformation in product development, where the leanness of an existing model was enhanced by embedding set-based concurrent engineering principles. Second, the developed model was structured into a set of well-defined activities and associated tools that were previously scattered or redundant. Finally, the developed model was trialled in an industrial project of a helicopter engine, tested to evaluate its value in enhancing the innovation level and reducing risk. The work presented in this article focused on early stage system level design, and future work will extend the implementation of set-based concurrent engineering to subsystem and component levels.
This paper discusses the results of research to develop measures of performance (metrics) for the new product introduction process in the aerospace industry, which will encourage a change in behaviour towards the adoption of lean principles in areas other than manufacturing. It examines how this was done and the successes and some problems of implementation. Seven key metrics for enterprise wide application are defined and discussed. A further eight are identified for process or product family specific application. The paper concludes that the metrics developed are beneficial in helping to improve performance and aligning corporate goals, but that further work is still required particularly with respect to the organizational arrangements and information systems technology required to implement them.
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