Success Story: The People Side of Lean Product Development

Click here for Sarah McCarvill's bio.

Revolutionizing the way projects are attacked and daily work proceeds has been a focus for the Otto Bock Salt Lake City product development group over the past 18 months. This revolution has led to reduced design cycles and better adherence to timelines; two things which have a direct impact on the company's bottom line.

This revolution starts and ends with a dynamic and diverse group of people that is willing to take risks, try something different, is resilient in the face of failure and can make decisions quickly in order to move forward.

Changing our physical space to reflect the dynamic world we wanted to create was a first step. As we started to own our world, we started implementing and experimenting with the application of lean design and development principals. In addition to keeping our projects moving, we were all reading about Toyota and IDEO and other design and development groups to build a knowledge base that would allow us to create our own recipe and flavor for efficient and effective product development.

This presentation will highlight both our successful and not-so-successful adventures from the past couple years. We will also share our expectations for where this revolution will take us in the next years.