The Lean Machine – The 7+1 principles of Lean Product and Process Development

Dantar Oosterwal and Andreas Dörken

Argo-Efeso Consulting Group

This workshop introduces participants to the foundational principles of lean product and process development. It is targeted specifically for newcomers to the community to help get them up to speed on some of the basic concepts so they can get the most from the main conference. The workshop based on Dantar´s model “The Lean Machine 7+1”

In 2003 Harley-Davidson was awarded the Outstanding Corporate Innovator award by the Product Development Management Association (PDMA) yet a short time later the same organization was able to deliver over 4 times as much innovation. Through a significant investment in production capacity, the backlog of motorcycle demand Harley-Davidson had enjoyed in the 1990’s drastically reduced. In order to generate product demand, Harley-Davidson adopted lean product development methods to their product development system powering this dramatic improvement in innovation output and demand. Not many people recognized the business significance of the article in the November 2005 issue of Easy Rider Magazine.

At a glance it was like every other article in every other bike magazine with a write-up on the latest products launches and the new model line-up for Harley-Davidson. After all, Easy Rider is not generally considered a scholarly journal. The headline of the article proclaimed in big bold print, “The Sleeping Giant Awakens”. The Sleeping Giant Awakens?

Harley-Davidson had seen 24 quarters of record sales and record profits. But these were bike guys and they were blown away by the torrent of new products flowing from the motor company. The largest introduction of new products they had ever seen. Harley-Davidson’s lean product development efforts resulted in 50% reduction in time to market and a 4-fold increase in throughput while maintaining a quality level of 98% repurchase intent. Later as the Vice President of Innovation for Sara Lee, Dantar once again applied these principles in leading the creation and implementation of Sara Lee’s global Innovation process resulting in 35% improvement in R&D efficiency and 5 fold increase in revenue from new products.

Over the years, Dantar has worked with numerous companies as an adviser, coach, and consultant to help them learn and implement these techniques. In his book Shingo Prize awarded book, ‘The Lean Machine’, Dantar shares the story from this product development transformation. In this session, he will share lessons from his learning journey as he tells his story of applying lean product development principles in a corporate environment that didn’t want to change. He will explore the complexities, the challenges, and the pitfalls associated with creating organizational change to improve the innovation process. He will also discuss key principles of ‘Knowledge based product development’ and how you can utilize them to improve any product development system to improve innovation flow, revenue growth, and profitability.

7 Keys to successful Lean Product Development that will be covered include:

• Manufacture customers
• Portfolio Cadence & Flow
• Set-Based
• Reusable Knowledge
• Visual Management
• Lead with Entrepreneur System Designers
• Teams of Responsible Experts

+ 1:

• Match Throughput to Business Need

These 7+1 key aspects to Lean Product Development and the all-important connection to the business are summarized in a one page document called Lean Product Development in a nutshell and can be downloaded here: https://www.developlean.com/lean-product-development-in-a-nutshell

5 Take-aways you can expect from this session:

• What Lean Product Development is and why it is sometimes referred to as Knowledge-Based or Set-Based Product Development
• The benefits of Lean Product Development for the organization
• Key aspects of Lean Product Development which can be applied to improve product development in any organization
• Why moving lean from manufacturing upstream to product development doesn’t work
• How to apply and integrate Lean Product development to an organization

In more recent time Dantar has teamed up with Andreas Dörken and developed the model even further.

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.

Andreas Dörken, Sr. Vice-President has over 25 years of experience working in industrial firms and consulting. He began his career in the petrochemical industry (British Petroleum, PdVSA), where he re-engineered the production processes of medium and heavy oil. He then started to implement lean manufacturing best practices in various process and discrete production environments, spreading from food processing and chemical to automotive suppliers, agricultural equipment, metalworking and industrial hardware. He was CEO of a lighting equipment manufacturer, before returning to consulting. He managed local and global footprint strategy developments and deployments. Furthermore, he co-leads the product innovation & value management practice at Argo. In that capacity he has led several long-term engagements related to value engineering and Lean Product Development in the valves, pumps, agriculture, automotive, electronic goods and chemical industries in Europe, as well as in US, and Asia. Andreas manages Argo’s European private equity portfolio, thus getting involved in numerous operations due diligences (ODD) across a wide industry spectrum every year.