Everyone wants to have a lean product development process; unfortunately, nobody seems to know what one is. Most agree that the fundamental concepts of production improvement are applicable from product concept through launch, but that the lack of proven tools is frustrating and the transference through the manufacturing analogy too forced. In truth, the tools for "LPD" do exist, just not as a unified suite or even a point A to B roadmap. But they’re out there.

There is abundant evidence in industry of the benefits of concurrent engineering and like principles (VOC, QFD, DFM/A, CCPM, etc.). Results are typically expressed in the form of cycle-time reductions, which in turn result in degrees of increased profit and market leadership, depending on the role that time-based (rather than feature or performance-based) competition plays in your market. But we all know that simply "forming teams" is not the same thing as "concurrent engineering".

Jim Womack, co-author of Lean Thinking, once told a story about how he is often besieged with requests from CEO's to visit their plants. "We are lean," they would exclaim, "we got workcells." "Workcells?" Womack would reply. "Well, if you are truly lean, then you must also have reduced inventory, WIP and batch sizes. You must have dramatically increased your throughput and on-time delivery. Tell me, what has happened to quality? Production cost? Market share? Profits?" The returning silence he typically received was deafening. The emperor, it would seem, had no clothes. We must expect the same to occur in the future when people claim to have achieved "lean development."

So what is lean product development? If I go by Lean Thinking, a lean development process is one that is focused on "promoting value" and "eliminating waste" while enabling customers to "pull" the product through your system's "flow." Of course, these are just nice words that can mean anything.

What are the areas that a lean process improves? How does one measure success? What are the results to be expected? If you're lean, where would you feel it? Let’s build a castle in the sky. Here's a short list of the benefits I think a lean development process might provide. Would the lean stretch goal of "perfection" look something like this?

• Prolific idea generation
• Discriminating project selection process
• Intimate customer relationships
• Customer-driven requirements and minimal downstream "feature creep"
• No overcapacity of resources with flexible allocation
• Double-digit cycle-time improvement over a statistically significant period
• Consistent budgetary conformance across projects
• Significant defect reduction in manufacturing and field performance
• Strong supplier partnerships
• Reduction in mid-stream engineering changes and rework, especially after release to manufacturing
• Accelerated "response time" to unexpected project crises with no negative effects to project schedule
• Greater product quality and reliability
• Increased market share, customer satisfaction and retention
• Clear and harmonious cross-functional communication
• Higher success rates for new product introductions
• Higher management tolerance for individual project failures
• Product portfolio weighted towards most profitable products
• Long term product strategy and "planned obsolescence"
• One or more competitors leaving primary market during Lean tenure
• Low employee turnover, especially in engineering department
• Effective prognosticating and diagnosing metrics system
• Product reclamation strategy
• Organization-wide understanding of business goals and priorities

Of course, this company does not exist. Nor, probably, will it ever. Chances are if you hung your shingle on attacking this list, you would smell something, but it wouldn’t be lean product development. Sometimes it’s too easy to focus on the desire for results rather than the means to accomplish them or the domino effect of our choices.

Contemplating your business system is sometimes less like breaking boards with karate chops and more like meditating on a zen koan, a mysterious question that begets more ultimate questions. True systems thinking is akin to enlightenment. Sit in your lotus position and ask yourself: "What does lean product development mean to me?"

Probing further, I was impressed at their extensive collection of pointers to free resources for the technically minded. While it has much of an Internet/eCommerce slant, chances are you'll find something of value in one of their categories: Cyber-culture, E-commerce, Education, Games, Graphics, Hardware, International, Internet, Linux, Marketing, Politics, Programming, Software, Web Design, Web Promotion, Y2K.

A special session has been added to the program, "0 to 60 in No Time." You are invited to learn how Redback Networks managed outsourced operations and quickly turned out products in a high-stakes race. Sean Laskey, Redback's VP of Operations, will discuss how this start up came out of the gates fast--and beat giants like Cisco and Nortel to market with its products.

For more information on Product Development and the Supply Chain, go to: http://www.roundtable.com/Event_Center/SUP20/SUP20.html

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