Agenda
Are you ready to connect with the thinkers at the leading edge of lean improvement journeys?
May 19-20, 2021
LEAN INNOVATION - updated agenda
VIRTUAL CONFERENCE
First of all, we would like to thank you for attending the conference.
We depend on You to create great exchanges of knowledge. We would also like to thank all speakers for volunteering to tell their story and to participate in the conference
We were really hoping we could do the conference in Helsinki, but due to the pandemic situation in the world, we will have to hold the conference in a digital format in Zoom. We will do our utmost to make this an EXCHANGE of knowledge as if it were in person.
The conference theme is Lean Innovation, an area which we believe is very important today and for the future. We focus on The Science of Improving Innovation.
If you miss a presentation we are recording them and you will have access to the presentations during 30 days. We hope the EXCHANGE of knowledge will continue long after the conference and recommend or LinkedIn page as a good arena for this.
The slides from most of the presentations will be shared as a pdf after the conference and the speakers are normally very open to answering questions and continuing the EXCHANGE of knowledge.

Juha Tammi
General Manager at Lean Association of Finland
Conference Co-chair

Norbert Majerus
Business Owner at norbert majerus consulting llc
Conference Co-chair

Peter Palmér
Transformation Office at Scania Group
Conference Chair LPPDE
Wednesday, May 19, 2021 Virtual Conference
9:00 [EEST]
Online Event
Welcome and Instructions
Welcome by Peter Palmér, conference chair, LPPDE and Juha Tammi General Manager at Lean Association of Finland

9:10 - 10:10 [EEST]
Online Event
Keynote: Making the Case for Lean Driven Innovation
Norbert Majerus, majerus consolting inc
- Lack of leadership presence and support
- Too high workload
- Too optimistic time schedules
- Late on everything
- Too much firefighting and panics
Bio
Beginning in 2005, Norbert implemented a principles-based lean product development process at the three Global Innovation Centers of The Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company. For more than a decade he was Goodyear’s lean champion in research and development.
Norbert, born and raised in Luxembourg, has a Master’s degree in Chemistry from the Universitaet des Saarlandes, Saarbruecken, Germany. He joined Goodyear in Luxembourg in 1978, transferred to Akron in 1983, and has worked most disciplines in the Goodyear innovation centers in Luxembourg and Akron.
In 2016, Norbert published his first book, Lean-Driven Innovation (Norbert Majerus, CRC Press, 2016), which received the Shingo Research Award. Also in 2016, with Norbert’s guidance the Goodyear R&D organization applied for and received the AME Excellence Award. Norbert has spoken at many conferences in the United States and other countries. Since retiring from Goodyear in 2017, he continues to share his extensive lean expertise via norbert majerus consulting.
Professional profile:
- Holds several Goodyear chairman and CTO awards
- Holds 60 U.S. patents and trade secrets, as well as numerous international patents
- Master blackbelt six sigma and master blackbelt in lean
- Featured speaker and popular teacher at many lean and innovation events
- Fluent in English, German. French, and Luxembourgish
- Work experience — innovation, new product design, equipment design, manufacturing, new product marketing and launch, new tire design, original equipment tire design, activity-based accounting, TQM, project management, ISO 9001 and other global OE quality standards, tire design standards, six sigma, lean innovation and lean product development

10:10 - 10:30 [EEST]
Short Break
10:30 - 11:30 [EEST]
Online Event
Keynote: Management of Covid-19 Pandemic - Strategy and processes
Martti Hetemaki, Helsinki Graduate School of Economics and The Finnish Innovation Fund Sitra
Finland is (so far) coping fairly well with the pandemic in worldwide comparison and ranks best among European Union when comparing cases/million inhabitants and deaths/100 000.
Also the economic impacts have been less severe than elsewhere in EU. Martti gives us a insight on the strategy and processes to manage the Covid-19 pandemic.
Bio
Martti is former permanent State Secretary at the Finnish ministry of Finance. He holds the position of most influential civil servant in Finland for seven year fixed term period 2013- 2020 . He was also the head of Government task force in spring 2020, which planned the measures against pandemic. In fall 2020 he then was among few other high rank experts assessing the virus spread possibilities and implications and working as advisor to Finnish government.


11:30 - 12:30 [EEST]
Networking Lunch
12:30 - 13:10 [EEST]
Online Event
Half Double Methodology Case Study
Anders Hugnell, Implement
How does the Half Double Methodology work? It focuses on three core elements -Impact, Flow & Leadership. Half Double is a project management approach based on actual human behavior, unpredictability and complexity. It has been tested and validated through numerous projects in various industries and been applied to a wide range of project types – and it works.
Half Double Institute has now been established as a self-owned organization and foundation, which means that all property (concept, trademarks, training materials, etc.) is now owned by the Half Double Institute. This is a huge step in diffusion of the concept with the aim to increase the success rate of projects worldwide. The Half Double Institute is an impartial, non-profit organization governed by The Danish Industry Foundation and Implement Consulting Group as a foundation – giving back earnings to the project management community trying to change the world a bit. www.HalfDoubleInstitute.org
Bio
Anders Hugnell has a Ph.D. in ME with focus on product development and Lean. Anders has over 25 years of experience in running both academic and industrial training programs in OPEX, Lean, product development. He started and ran the KTH (Royal Institute of Technology) Lean centre for three years. Anders has also written books on Lean Management and he has been keynote speaker at several conferences in different countries.


13:10 - 13:20 [EEST]
Short Break
13:20 - 14:00 [EEST]
Online Event
Eating an elephant, that is live, furious, and mutating needs innovative development: how Agile and Lean PPD help
Vesa Koskela, Murata
At the time for the original conference I defined two areas where I have something to say: “what we miss when focusing on project management instead of product management, and how too large projects impact organizations and how to avoid and solve.“ To link these areas (somewhat) to Innovation of I’ve was thinking title and sub-title as below: Lessons from large chaotic projects: how Agile and Lean PPD help or, even better: Eating an elephant, that that is live, furious, and mutating needs innovative development: how Agile and Lean PPD help.
Abstract of the presentation:
In old days the guidance for eating an elephant was to eat it in small pieces. For years already, there is no time for a hunt of a big elephant, slice it to small pieces and work through all pieces until done – without major changes. Development has mostly turned to release based planning and execution, but this does not automatically mean success. When schedule and technical complexity targets are beyond organization capabilities and capacity the result will be a chaos.
In the presentation I go through learnings from chaotic projects which have impacted whole organization, and how Agile and Lean product development practices would have helped. In addition, I look also at management challenge: why improvements, even when self-evident, are so difficult implement?
Bio
Vesa Koskela, 20+ years’ experience in management of R&D product development and IT delivery projects, in microchip, healthcare IT, x-ray equipment and MEMS sensor areas. Past president of PMI Finland, interests in optimizing ways of working by combining planning, agility, and lead development. Certifications: Certified SAFe Agilist, Professional Scrum Product Owner, Certified Scrum Master, TOGAF9, ISTQB foundation, Project Management Professional.
Vesa is managing R&D projects developing next generation micro mechanical and micro electrical components. Vesa is also a past president of PMI Finland. PMI is promoting professionalism in project management, personal development of professional project managers and project management methods as everyone’s life skills.


14:00 - 14:30 [EEST]
Networking Break
14:30 - 15:10 [EEST]
Online Event
How to Apply Agile to Hardware Projects
Matti Kauhanen, ABB
Many companies struggle with how to apply agile mindset and methods to the hardware part of the company. Matti will present how this has been done at ABB, which approach they have chosen and what worked and what didn´t work so well.
Bio
Matti is heading the Technology Management Office in the Drives Business Line, which is responsible for electric drives, related solutions and services within the ABB Group. He joined Strömberg in 1984 and since then Matti has held various positions from design engineer to management within the company in the areas of research and development.
Since 2000, he has been responsible for technology and platform development for various products. His focus has been on research and technology development for product portfolio. By building strong co-operation and common research projects with ABB Corporate Research and Universities Matti has enabled competence development and high qualified experts for Drives’ units in different locations.
Addition to technology and research his focus has also been on research and development processes and productivity, product architecture management, competence development, customer and user experience.
Digital powertrain, digital twins, analytics, software platform and connectivity technologies are some of Mattis new research objectives.


15:10 - 15:20 [EEST]
Short Break
15:20 - 16:00 [EEST]
Online Event
Valve Sprints
Jukka Borgman, Neles


16:00 - 16:10 [EEST]
Short Break
16:10 - 17:00 [EEST]
Online Event
How We Develop Innovation Champions
Bengt Johansson, ASSA ABLOY Group
Quality and Lean as well as Lean Innovations have been in focus from the beginning of last decade. To manage these challenges ASSA ABLOY developed a Lean Innovation Champion Program over their 90 R&D sites. Bengt will tell the story and the reflections for the future.
His last slide from last year’s digital “teaser” read: Into the future… … but I´ll save that for Helsinki, where he will tell us of a radical turn in this project,
Bio
Bengt has been working around 20 years with product development in different roles, production engineering, through quality management and product development. The latest 10 years Bengt has spent in ASSA ABLOYs Lean Innovation program where he has been the Global Lean Innovation Manager the latest 4 years.


Thursday, May 20, 2021 Virtual Conference
9:00 [EEST]
Online Event
Welcome and Instructions
Welcome by Peter Palmér, conference chair, LPPDE and Juha Tammi General Manager at Lean Association of Finland

9:10 - 10:10 [EEST]
Online Event
Keynote: Researching Lean Product Development
Dantar Oosterwal, Argo Inc
Dantar was a presenter at the first LPPDE conference back in 2008 and he had already been on the journey for many year´s. He worked close to Allen Ward and also Takashi Tanaka and learn, practiced, reflected and improved.
He worked Harley Davidson with motorcycles, Whirlpool with dishwashers and at Sara Lee with consumers goods. Dantar has since worked as a consult and and advisor to many companies and industries. During these year´s he developed his Product Development model 6+1. To continue his researching voyage Dantar has started a PhD in Lean Product Development.
Bio
Dantar Oosterwal is highly regarded as a global thought-leader in Lean Innovation & Product Development systems as well as an advisor, speaker and award-winning author. He has a passion for learning and applying lean product development systems to impact improvements of business performance. Dantar has championed many large and global operational improvement initiatives as well as developed and led Lean Innovation transformations for organizations resulting in profound improvements to both top-line revenue and bottom-line efficiency. He has been awarded the Shingo Prize for his work in Lean Innovation by the Shingo Institute, the Outstanding Corporate Innovator award from PDMA and several product patents. Dantar has served as the Global Vice President of Innovation at Sara Lee and Product Development & Product Planning Leader at Harley-Davidson Motor Company. His consulting experience spans a diversity of industries ranging from raw materials (mining and chemicals) to high-tech defense systems. Today Dantar is Sr. Vice-president at Argo.


10:10 - 10:30 [EEST]
Short Break
10:30 - 11:30 [EEST]
Online Event
Keynote: Lean Leadership
Johanna Lentonen, Weather Instruments Vaisala
Good leadership can be a great catalyst for success.
Great products need innovations, innovations need inspirational environment; right frameworks and good leadership to unleash the potential of smart people.
My passion is to build great products and make a difference to this world. Ever since 2009 I have been fascinated by Lean Product Development, including Product Management, and consequently reflecting and applying the principles of LPDE in the leadership domain already 12 years.
During this session I will share both my personal insights and experiences on LEAN leadership and practical LPDE implementations in Vaisala, with intention to provide food for thought and excitement for all those interested in becoming even better leaders.
In addition to theory/philosophy, there are concrete examples how to get everybody on board, how to avoid sub-optimization and focus rather on customer value streams.
Bio
Johanna Lentonen, Director of Weather Instruments, has been leading Weather Instruments global product business since Nov 2016 for Vaisala. Vaisala is a global leader in weather, environmental, and industrial measurements headquarter in Vantaa, Finland.
Johanna is a strong professional of Product and Technology development, including Project Management and Product Management. She has over 20 years of experience in creating and mastering state-of-art offering for demanding weather applications.
Johanna has been applying LPPD for over 10 years, and now-a-days is also a board member of Finnish LEAN association.


11:30 - 12:30 [EEST]
Networking Lunch
12:30 - 13:10 [EEST]
Online Event
TEST TEST TEST
Christer Lundh, AUFERO
There are two major processes in a company, development and production. New needs e.g., products, services or improvements undergo development. All different kinds of present operations undergo production. Development aims to create new value for your customers. The higher aim – the more customer values – the larger risks.
Development has to deal with the unknowns. If it is known, it is production. What you don’t see, can contain good news in one case and bad news in another. Bad news doesn’t show easily. The unknown unknowns – what you don’t know, you don’t know – can only be understood in retrospect of tests. Furthermore, rare events are rare and tend not to show up in past samples. Many of today’s development processes underestimate the long-term average, trying to avoid or minimize sample testing. Given that the rare event is almost always negative, the better practice is to Test, Test, Test.
There is a non-linear relation between scope and reward or harm from testing. A metaphor explains the non-linearity. Relying on end of development system testing, is in comparison like falling from ten meters. The later actually seems to be the cutoff point for death from free fall. If you fall twice from five meters you survive. “Falling from one meter ten times cause you less harm, than falling from ten meters one time.” And the harm falling from ten meters are more than ten times the harm falling from one meter.
In an opaque operation, like development, to figure out what knowledge is required to navigate is impossible. Different strategies creating value from testing and reducing harm for development will be covered. In production variance may create cost of poor quality. Contradicting, in development variance may create value.
Bio
Christer Lundh has a long and deep understanding of lean product development. Over the past fifteen years, in different leader positions, he has effectively implemented, and applied product development process based on Flow and Knowledge Based Development (KBD) at several companies.
To empower people, Christer has successfully adapted development teams around ‘Function / Value’ recognized by customers. Small cross-disciplinary Function Teams, applying Cadence and Flow on two-to-three-weeks takt, using Kanban Flow Boards and Daily Stand-up. And training and mentoring leaders and engineers, on the job training, of A3 process for problem solving / gap closing.
Christer has worked in lean set-up as Entrepreneurial System Designer leading a start-up. With speed and focus, rapid and valuable customer feedback and great sense of urgency, the development teams swiftly improved on every new prototype. Enabled teams to learn about customers’ true needs. With present leadership, challenging targets and empower of people, teams quantify and make gaps visible. To see, transparency, boost motivation. Applying homing, with multiple quantified countermeasures, teams together close their gaps, and the best – them owning the solutions.
At Kongsberg Automotive Christer initiated a companywide transformation implementing Knowledge Based Development in 2008. He led that strategic transformation during 2009 working together with Michael Kennedy (TCC). Thereafter Christer led the pilots as trainer that pioneered a full global roll out during 2010-2013.
Christer is founder and president of AUFERO AB. Embedded, as a transformational "catalyst", he offers help to leaders to succeed with Agile and Lean Product Development.


13:10 - 13:20 [EEST]
Short Break
13:20 - 14:00 [EEST]
Online Event
How to Use Lean to Build Innovation Capability
Tuukka Kulha, Neste
Innovation Excellence unit includes competence teams for Portfolio & Program Management, IPR, and Development & Processes. Development & Processes team drives effectiveness and efficiency across Innovation organization, especially focusing on innovation capability, process development, continual improvement and digitalization. I have my background in the fields of innovation, supply management, business and data analytics, and team sports.
Bio
How to use Lean to build innovation capability Tuukka is VP of Innovation Excellence, the unit includes competence teams for Portfolio & Program Management, IPR, and Development & Processes. Development & Processes team drives effectiveness and efficiency across Innovation organization, especially focusing on innovation capability, process development, continual improvement and digitalization. I have my background in the fields of innovation, supply management, business and data analytics, and team sports.


14:00 - 14:30 [EEST]
Networking Break
14:30 - 17:00 [EEST]
Online Event
Lean Portfolio Management
Miia Humalajoki & Elli Kalliokoski, Kone Coporation
During the last years at Kone, a global leader in the elevator and escalator industry, Miia Humalajoki and Elli Kalliokoski developed a new method for portfolio management.
The goal was to create: “A dynamic process through which organizations select the priorities that align with their corporate strategy and will yield the highest return on investment and customer value through optimal resource allocation” – Gartner
During this mini-workshop Miia and Elli will guide us through how they did it and what major problems they encountered.
Bios
Miia Humalajoki works as Portfolio Manager since a year and is a process development and supply chain professional with versatile experience in demanding positions in different industries. By nature, she is open, active, determined, and inspired by challenges. Miia has been thanked for being an iron-clad professional with positive energy, and ability to bring people along on projects and change, also in challenging times. Her experience has shaped her leadership style as understanding larger entities, yet managing hands-on.
She is a process development and supply chain professional with versatile experience in demanding positions in different industries.
Elli Kalliokoski is an experienced organizational and change leader. She has experience of leading R&D teams, product development projects and programs and developing organizational capabilities in large, global firms. As a leader she has the ability to create business cases from strategic point of view with hands on operational details.
She is strongly oriented to continuous development. Elli is a determined person and I am home in using systematic and organized working methods. She is also a community builder who believes in growing knowledge by active sharing. Elli believes that the best results can be created with collaborative teams.
Elli has previously held different managerial positions in the field of Lean, R&D and processes at Kone and ABB. Elli is a former member of the board at Lean Association of Finland.



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LPPDE events have an impressive gathering of lean product and process development practitioners. We’ve assembled an impressive lineup of keynote speakers.