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Lean product development


Lean product development (LPD) is a lean approach to meet the challenges of product development, notably:

Toyota started its journey with lean product development at Toyoda Loom Works (see History of Toyota), rather than the lean manufacturing that became famous through the book "The Machine that changed the world".

When Toyota started developing cars, there was a difference between its context in Japan and its competitors in the USA. Toyota had few educated engineers and little prior experience. Car companies in US had the benefit of engineering schools and a well-educated work force in the cities. To tackle this shortfall in knowledge and experience, Toyota conducted an incremental approach to development that built on this knowledge and became the basis of the lean systems Toyota uses today.

Allen Ward studied Toyota’s lean product development system, and found parallels with the US airplane industry. For instance, the Wright brothers’ method of constructing their airplane became one of the legacies they passed on to the aviation industry. This approach enabled the USA to create one of World War 2's most successful fighter planes from scratch, in just six months. After the war Toyota incorporated many of the airline industry's findings into its own product development methodology.

While some basic principles and guidelines are applicable across lean product development and lean production, such as waste reduction, many applications of lean process for development have focused more on the production approach.

The purpose of production, is to manufacture products reliably within margins of control. The flow of value is physically evident and the link between cause and effect is easy to see. For example, feedback on adjusting the speed of production is immediately realized in an increase or decrease in rejected items. Any decisions made must be based on best practice.

The purpose of product development, on the other hand, is to design new products that improve the life of customers. This is a complex space where the flow of value can only be discerned at an abstract level and cause and effect might be separated by time and space. For example, feedback on the decision to design a certain feature will not be received until the product has been built and is in the hands of the customer. This means that decisions are made on short-cycle experimentation, prototyping, set-based design, and emergent practice. A premium is placed on creating reusable knowledge and reducing risk at handover points.


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