3 Questions to Help Confirm a Company is Practicing Lean Product Development:

1. What is your new product introduction cadence?

What is the % on time, and percentage on budget? If not consistently on time & on budget, what is the gap you have to close?

 

Photo: conventional chaos vs lean credit: Dantar P. Oosterwall, The Lean Machine: How Harley-Davidson Drove Top-Line Growth and Profitability with Revolutionary Lean Product Development, p.106

Photo: conventional chaos vs lean

credit: Dantar P. Oosterwall,

The Lean Machine: How Harley-Davidson Drove Top-Line Growth and Profitability with Revolutionary Lean Product Development, p.106



2. Where are you applying set based concurrent engineering?




Photo: Denso trade off curvesCredit: Allen C. Ward, Durward K. Sobek, Lead Product and Process Development, 2nd ed. p.172

Photo: Denso trade off curves

Credit: Allen C. Ward, Durward K. Sobek,

Lead Product and Process Development, 2nd ed. p.172

3. Where are you using trade off curves in development?

Where is design/engineering creating trade off curves to supply reusable knowledge to accelerate product development?

 

Some questions I provided an institutional board member to help them validate whether their investment is applying lean business strategy.

If not, it is worth more than traditional financial analysis is capable of revealing.