The lean principles described above should be transferred to new product development. The question should be answered to what extent the application of lean can improve collaboration in new product development.
Based on the potentials just developed, five practically oriented insights will then be formulated, the lean development insights (LDI).
The definition of the value, the value stream and the introduction of lean standards in stiff assembly lines are relatively uncomplicated. The value of physical products is clearly visible. Modern design, valuable raw materials, useful function, or the brand image conveyed are reasons why a customer is willing to spend money. In product development, it is more difficult, more abstract. The results of the development are not physical, but intellectual.
They are created in the form of information and should be made visible through a digital validated visualization of product and manufacturing processes. [7] Knowledge must be generated and transferred to co-workers.
Thus, the value stream in product development consists of a flow of information. A good way to visualize value and waste is a value stream analysis. Its goal is to identify the individual processing steps, activities and their sequence and duration, lying and waiting times, grinding and other process data. Schuh explains how this analysis can be applied in product development. He states that the formulation of guidelines and target statuses are the basis for identifying the value in product development.
Defining a huge, far-away goal, a management policy, and deriving smaller objectives from it will help to identify waste and value in product development. [2] He stresses the need for detailed descriptions of customer value and its clear and transparent communication across the company. The
real contribution to the fulfillment must be made readily accessible and understood by every single employee throughout the process, so that they can do their work. Knowledge about waste and value is the foundation for lean development. Any other following insight is based on the first LDI.
LDI1: Customer value in product development is generated in the flow of information and must be made transparent
throughout the entire process.
According to ISO 9000, a process is a set of interrelated or interacting activities which transforms inputs into outputs [8]. The goal of lean development is to create standardized, recurring workflows. They should ensure good collaboration in complex projects through lean processes. But to create them, a clear definition of the project must be achieved first.
“If there is no consensus on the fundamentals, it is pointless to forge together plans.” [9] In order to carry out a project with maximum efficiency, it is important to provide clarity on the entire project. As is already practiced in the automotive industry, all crucial decisions should be set at the beginning of the product development process. Such frontloading should be performed in organizational aspects such as tasks, competencies, responsibilities, targets, milestones, project structure, scheduling, cost planning, risk analysis and technical content issues, e.g. design and functionalities. Agile methods like the war-room can help here by intensively creating the product concept in a short time.
This is a special, intense method of simultaneous engineering. This term describes the goal-oriented, interdisciplinary, collaborative and parallel work of development, production and sales [5]. Organizationally different teams should work simultaneously on one and the same issue. This requires an explicit task and concept definition, good communication and exchange of data. This means that independent tasks should be executed in parallel and should be seen as a general concept at the process level. In contrast, dependent tasks cannot be executed simultaneously. Co-workers should bide their time aggressively and start with total commitment once the preceding step is completed. This leads to a major reduction in processing time and a significant increase in productivity and should be applied at the operative engineering level. So frontloading and simultaneous engineering can be performed, it is important that sufficient capacities are held in reserve for this early stage. Thus, it is possible to clarify uncertainties and thus avoid changes early on.
Figure 3: Frontloading and pro-active culture of change.
This results in the next insight:
LDI2: An explicit task definition at an early stage and
interdisciplinary, simultaneous work minimize errors, changes and iteration loops and eventually shorten the cycle time.
As described, new product development is very complex and requires collaboration between different persons, and therefore clear processes.
However, the single developer needs as much leeway as possible in his daily activities to work out the best solution, powered by his creativity. This conflict of aims, clear processes and leeway for creativity can be solved by dissecting the problem. Where is flexibility, and where is standardization of the processes helpful?
As identified earlier, the individual product designer needs leeway in his engineering work. In daily work (engineering level) he should be given all the space and tools he needs to deliver the best result. Since he works in a highly complex environment with many different people, collaboration (process level) should be standardized to facilitate coordination and maximize transparency and clarity in processes.
The Stage Gate Process is predestined to meet this demand of organizational structure in development processes and helps to create a company-wide common understanding of the new product development process that strengthens collaboration. In issues about rights and responsibilities, the accepted Stage Gate Process provides an objective appraisal function and allows binding and consistent decisions.
Figure 4: Leeway and standardization.
In detail, project-wide synchronization points should be inserted to ensure proper interaction in time and content issues between different departments and people. At these points, the results and information should be synchronized and exchanged. The focus should lie here on standardization, collaboration, reconcilement and discussion about problems and new ideas.
Thereby phases are generated that organize the complete development into a timely consistent rhythm. During the individual phase the developer should be given maximum leeway for creativity to generate the best solutions. It is very important that he can unfold his personal skills and creativity without being blocked by organizational constraints. Non-innovative, repeated actions of the engineer should be standardized and simplified or automated.
It will then become possible to synchronize the individual developing actions of a cross-functional team at the end of each phase. The conflict of aims, standardization and collaboration versus individual leeway in an interdisciplinary product development, is resolved in this manner. For this reason, standardization can create space for creativity and therefore help to create a setting to come up with innovations. Thus, the best practice in new product development is to develop appropriate approaches and methods for both levels, engineering and process, that interwine and act symbiotically. [2]
The corresponding insight is:
LDI3: A consistent rhythm with synchronization points at the end of each phase and maximum leeway in between simplifies collaboration and generates space for creative inventions.
To set the synchronization points properly, it is important to perform value stream analysis and establish a continuous value-adding development process. However, in most cases the project members do not work just on one project. Companies are looking for many projects to maximize revenue.
If staffing levels do not increase as well, the individual employee has to work on many projects at the same time. This gives rise to substantial problems.
Employees often have to switch between tasks, e.g. stop following up the last workshop through having to attend meetings for another project.
Figure 5: Reduction of workload leads to higher project throughput.
Constantly switching between activities causes the lead times of the individual projects to accumulate and so results in more lead times.
Furthermore, “mental lead time” is generated. The engineer needs time to become acquainted with the action previously started. Multitasking evokes harm. Thus switching between projects must be minimized, either by reducing the number of projects or increasing staffing levels. Concentrating on a single project will accelerate its execution. Techt states that, in multi-project companies, a reduction of 25% in workload can increase multi-project output by 20% and lower project lead times by 35%. [10] If fewer projects are running at once, the individual employee has fewer tasks to manage at once and can exercise his functions more intensively, so ensuring better quality work. In addition, fewer projects are then pending and are accumulating lead time. In practice, this might allow one engineer to manage two projects that are in a polar project state to overcome unpreventable waiting times. This leads to following insight:
LDI4: A reduction of simultaneously processed projects leads to a shorter lead time and greater project throughput and allows for more flexible resource allocation for each project.
It was previously assumed that the data exchange process works well when the process is properly defined. However, reality proves that the exchange of information can yield problems. New product development generates and exchanges large volumes of data and information between the participants involved in the process and has to cope with reciprocal dependencies and several interests. There is often special software that disrupts the flow of information, and consistent data management is lacking. Collaboration, release management, version handling and the multiple use of single objects lead to major problems. Only when all data is supplied from one source the
accuracy of data is preserved, so allowing exchange to be simplified. The process of product lifecycle management (PLM) and its contribution to solving this problem is thus described below.
PLM aims to manage data, documents, processes, functions and applications over the entire lifecycle of the product in a holistic, enterprise-wide approach. The different types of data are stored and made available in one system, which integrates all software components throughout the whole lifecycle. The core data management process collects all product-defining data, which are not fixed in documents or a file structure but simply stored in a database. Structure is provided by relations of metadata and ever exists once, and all references are fed by it [2].
An implementation project must be started in order to use the PLM system.
Matt & Partner found outthat 41% of these projects fail, and 43% of them exceeded the budget [11]. Companies often skip the analysis of the current state and fail to create processes that meet the company’s needs and the user’s acceptance. A jointly executed value stream analysis and the formulation of a PLM strategy that is derived from the corporate strategy can put things right. Media discontinuity and island systems must give way to transparency and data consistency. It is critical to gain user acceptance by including them in the implementation process and selecting a user-friendly system. Well-organized training and communication of the benefits of the system are requirements for a successful implementation. Thus, the fifth insight is:
LDI5: The implementation of a user-friendly, accepted and integrated PLM system provides for continuous value creation in new product development by means of a consistent flow of information.