The Application of an Assessment Tool for Lean Product Development: An exploratory study in Spanish Companies

Abstract

Lean practices have been applied by a diverse number of companies in manufacturing during the last decade. Nevertheless, the satisfactory and ongoing trajectory towards an effective application of Lean principles in the New Product Development Process (NPD) is currently under study as it is rather new in industry and the companies still face different challenges to successfully implement them. As a consequence, a novel Maturity Model and assessment tool called SMART has been developed as part of a Lean Transformation Toolkit (Lean 1'2) within the LeanPPD project funded by the European Commission (NMP-2008-214090). This Maturity Model and assessment tool has three main goals: 1) to enable companies to understand which are the main lean practices that are required to achieve a lean product development process and the four perspectives into which these practices are grouped 2) assess which are the companies' curr ent and desired maturity levels in order to develop an action plan for continuous improvement and 3) obtain in a simple and automatic way the results of the assessment highlighting the main opportunity areas. This tool is also meant to follow the company during the Lean Product and Process roadmap, providing the firm the maturity level in each milestone. Therefore, the objective of this paper is twofold, 1) to provide first insights of the successful validation of the SMART Assessment tool in five companies in Spain and 2) to summarize the results of an exploratory study which evidences difficulties and best practices in regards to the implementation of lean practices in product development.

Práticas para a melhoria contínua do Processo de Desenvolvimento de Produtos: análise comparativa de múltiplos casos

“…The Lean program proposes the simplification and reduction of formalization of the PDP (Haque & James-Moore, 2004;Cooper, 2009;Yan & Makinde, 2009;Sopelana et al, 2012). Improvements can be achieved through the application of Lean principles (Lean Thinking), related to the value stream identification, elimination of waste in PDP and the pursuit of perfection (Haque & James-Moore, 2004;Salgado et al, 2009;Khan et al, 2013;Tuli & Shankar, 2015).…”

“…Companies also have used the Value Stream Mapping and other lean manufacturing tools in the PDP in order to eliminate waste and inefficiencies and maximize the value of the product developed (Yan & Makinde, 2009;Cooper, 2009;Sopelana et al, 2012;Tuli & Shankar, 2015;Tyagi et al, 2015). The literature in this area also brings few details on how the Lean can be used to improve the PDP, since the focus is on improving traditional manufacturing processes (Haque & James-Moore, 2004;Rossi et al, 2012;Khan et al, 2013).…”

“…For the continuous improvement of the PDP can be applied principles of these programs, such as waste disposal (Chaudhuri, 2013) and tools such as, e.g., the Value Stream Mapping (Cooper, 2009;Sopelana et al, 2012;Tuli & Shankar, 2015;Tyagi et al, 2015), however, these and other tools and principles for the improvement of the PDP still remain little used and analyzed by the literature (Haque & James-Moore, 2004;Rossi et al, 2012;Tuli & Shankar, 2015).…”

Identificação de relações entre Melhoria Contínua e Inovação de produtos e processos por meio de revisão bibliográfica sistemática

“…O objetivo da melhoria do próprio PDP é buscar a sua eficiência e eficácia, sem retrabalho e desperdício de tempo em atividades que não agregam valor ao processo (Yan & Makinde, 2009;Kowang & Rasli, 2011). Para a melhoria do PDP podem ser empregadas ferramentas da abordagem Lean como o Mapa de Fluxo de Valor e eliminação de desperdícios (Cooper, 2009;Sopelana et al 2012), porém o uso destas ferramentas e práticas para a melhoria do PDP ainda permanece restrito (Rossi et al, 2012). As empresas procuram estratégias eficazes para melhorar a gestão do seu PDP, a fim de serem competitivas, pois a eficácia desse processo pode ser tão importante para a competitividade quanto os próprios produtos inovadores (Yan & Makinde, 2011).…”

Systematic model for lean product development implementation in an automotive related company

“…Upon reviewing the lean product development assessment literature and case studies, different assessment models and tools have been found for conducting the lean assessment including (Haque & Moore, 2004;Al-Ashaab et al, 2015;Mohammadi, 2010;Chase, 2000;Sopelana et al, 2012). However, no unique assessment model or tool identified can be said to fit all product development company.…”