Keynote: Eliminating the Waste of Reinvention

Lean product development is a way of life at DJO Inc., ever since we began to realize tremendous financial returns with the adoption of a continual improvement culture and lean manufacturing methods seven years ago. Some of the processes adopted in product development are direct outgrowths of our manufacturing lean initiatives, such as Kaizen blitzing and line-of-sight management. Many other lean processes, such as protostorming, or set-based concurrent engineering, were developed and implemented when no clear manufacturing analogies were available.

To help create an accountable culture, metrics are used to objectively drive desirable behaviors throughout the organization. The product development group uses a mix of classic lagging indicators, such as product development cycle times, and more cutting edge and leading indicators such as the frequency of knowledge capture and go-see events.

In the presentation Rich will be discussing the following...

• Lean processes and tools used at DJO, and results achieved
• Classic and contemporary R&D metrics used at DJO, and results achieved