Thursday, March 7, 2024 Virtual Conference

Peter Palmér, LPPDE and Juha Tammi, Lean Association of Finland - Welcome and Instructions

Peter and Juha represent the two organization who organize these virtual online events and will moderate the Virtual Summit.

Christer Lundh, Founder and President at AUFERO – Learning Faster with Knowledge Based Design (KBD)

Development is the process in which someone or something grows or changes and becomes more advanced. Would you agree that if you learn faster, you also develop faster?

Usually, products and services development face some common challenges. Namely the pain and frustration of waste of time and waste of money. Caused by waiting on feedback, late loopbacks and delays as a consequence.

Imagine the following: two twin companies are starting on the same day and doing exactly the same thing but apply two different test approaches. One company believes they can simply build it and it will work. They spend three months on design and development, then to build and verify their product during another three months. The other company runs experiments until they get it right. They start by building the simplest testable product to receive fast feedback. Based on the learnings made, they have time left to build and run another two trial rounds within the first three months. Which of those companies will be in a better position in three months or more? It’s simple, you don’t make progress without test/ customer feedback. If you don’t have new information/ knowledge, you’re not making real progress.

Developers can learn faster applying Knowledge Based Development (KBD):

• Build new knowledge bottom-up, run multiple small experiments and move fast.
• Why you should test your product today, even if it’s not ready, because you’ll learn so much faster. Don’t let perfect get in the way of better.
• Learning the outer limits of function/ performance (points of failure) is not only OK, but also necessary. You only learn when you have real feedback.
• Why, you would be better off starting small and moving fast. The faster you receive feedback, the more experiments you can conduct within the same budget and time constraints. The 1/N-strategy, make N as large as possible.
• Re-use build knowledge applying ‘Set-Based Design’ to further improve your learning speed.

KBD will increase your speed of innovation – try, fail and learn faster from what doesn’t work, what not to do and why it doesn’t work.

Christer Lundh has a long and deep understanding of lean product development. Over the past fifteen years, in different leadership positions, he has effectively implemented, and applied product development processes 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.

Cécile Roche, Executive Director at Lean Sensei Partners and Institut Lean France – Lean engineering, how to start?

Two essential things make the difference between engineering and other fields such as production. The first is that the 'material' that circulates is immaterial, since it is knowledge. The second is that the activities are usually non-recurring, especially when it comes to finding a new solution to a new problem.

The trick is to start with what you don't know. Try to understand as best you can what you need to learn about the customer, the company's capabilities, our suppliers... and identify the places where you're going to have to find creative solutions. A number of practices can help to achieve this. We'll take a look at some of the simplest.

Cécile Roche, Co-founder and Managing Director of Lean Sensei Partners, Lean & Agile Director, and Director of Industrial Performance for the Thales Group for 15 years, Member of the Board of Directors of Institut Lean France, Author.

Cécile is a member of Institut Lean France, certified by Telecom Paristech (Certificat Etudes Spécialisés en Lean Management 2011) and trained in coaching (Alter&Coach, 2012). She also runs the Lean Academy for Engineering, a network and training course specialising in Lean Engineering. She is the author of "Little lean Guide to the use of managers" and the "Lean engineering travel guide“.

An electronics engineer, Cécile has led a number of projects and managed several units in the Operations and Technical areas. For almost 15 years in the Thales Group, she was in charge of building the global framework for Lean deployment, both in Production and in Engineering and Project activities for the whole Group. Today, she supports several company directors and development teams. She is in charge of running Lean training courses in several schools and at the Lean France Institute.

Jayne Nichols, Lean Coach & Director, Engineering at Fluor Canada Ltd – Lean Decision-Making in Industrial Capital Projects using the Choosing by Advantages system

This This presentation is about a lean system called Choosing by Advantages, which helps decision making in design and engineering.  It’s a multi-discipline, structured process that helps to prevent the backtracking experienced when technical decisions are not fully developed.  The presentation will include 2 parts:

• Strategic Analysis ( covering the CBA – Choosing By Advantages System)
• Case study from a capital project

Jayne Nichols has a long career at Fluor Canada working as a mechanical engineer and lean coach supporting the way of working improving the lean thinking and execution capabilities of industrial capital project teams – spanning front line to senior leadership levels. She has built lean capabilities on projects with complex technical elements, large number of design and construction partners, and distributed execution across the globe. Her special skills include coaching and mentoring the development of the following competencies; lean design, target value design / set based concurrent engineering / set based design, standard work in a design / engineering environment,  visible and reusable knowledge, visual management and more.

Geoff Neiley, Director Continuous Product Improvement and CM, Rapiscan Systems – Practicing Speedy Innovation

We will delve into the exciting world of speedy innovation, guided by the principles of Lean Product and Process Development (LPPD). LPPD offers a structured approach to eliminate waste, improve efficiency, and foster a culture of continuous improvement. By embracing these principles, we can accelerate our innovation cycles, streamline product development processes, and reduce time-to-market. Let’s embark on this journey to explore how we can harness the power of LPPD for speedy innovation.

Geoff will share a case study about the introduction a new product into a new market. From science fiction to revolutionary product, the AS&E team introduces the first handheld x-ray machine. The product was successfully launched in record time using the LPPD principles. You will see step in the product development process that highlight the principles of pulling testing forward, earlier in development. He will share experiences of failures that taught his organization lesson that continue today.

Geoff Neiley has been in the mechanical engineering field for 30 years. After graduating from the University of Maine, Orono, he learned much about the custom equipment business at NESLAB Instruments designing water chilling systems. Following this he spent 15 years working for BTU International where he designed and lead projects for conveyorized furnaces using in the electronics and solar industry. During this time, he earned his master’s in mechanical engineering at the University of Massachusetts, Lowell. It was at BTU where Geoff began to see the value of concurrent engineering. Geoff joined AS&E in 2011 where he led the mechanical team to introduce state-or-the-art x-ray products for the security market. Three years after joining AS&E (now Rapiscan Systems) in 2011, the leadership team introduced the concept of Lean Product Development. Geoff joined the leadership team reading many Lean PD books, inviting Lead PD practitioners to AS&E and attending LPPDE for several consecutive years. AS&E has roundly embraced the concurrent engineering aspects of Lean PD focusing greatly of Set-Base Innovation and cross-functional collaboration with our supply chain and manufacturing team. In 2022, Geoff took the role of Director of Continuous Product Improvement and Configuration Management. In his new role, he continues to leverage his learning from 8-years for practicing LPPD. Geoff has been a member of the board of Lean Product and Process Development Exchange since 2019. Today he is still learning and experimenting with lean processes and enjoys the pride felt in enabling a cross-functional team to achieve challenging, rewarding goals.

Final reflections and remarks

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By Juha Tammi & Peter Palmér

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