science

Lean product development

Lean product development is a science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Lean product development rather than just read about it. In short: Lean product development (LPD) is an approach to product development that specializes in minimizing waste. Other core principles include putting people over the product and creating new values in services and physical products.

Key takeaways

Lean product development belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Lean product development to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Lean product development from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Lean product development (LPD) is an approach to product development that specializes in minimizing waste. Other core principles include putting people over the product and creating new values in services and physical products. This method of product development has been adopted by companies such as Toyota.

History of Lean Product Development Toyota started its journey with lean product development at Toyota Loom Works (see History of Toyota). Their early approach is notably different from Lean manufacturing which became famous through the book "The Machine That Changed the World". When Toyota started manufacturing cars, there was a difference in manufacturing conditions between Japan and the USA. Toyota had few educated engineers and little prior experience. Car companies in the US employed a well-educated workforce in the cities and benefited from the research and student skill sets of established engineering schools. To tackle this shortfall in knowledge and experience, Toyota conducted an incremental approach to development that built on their existing knowledge and became the basis of the lean systems Toyota uses today. Allen Ward studied Toyota’s lean product development system and found parallels with the US airplane industry. For instance, the Wright brothers’ method of constructing their airplanes became one of the legacies they passed on to the aviation industry. This approach enabled the USA to create one of World War II's most successful fighter planes from scratch in the short span of six months. After the war, Toyota incorporated many of the airline industry's findings into its product development methodology.

Differences between lean product development and lean production While some basic principles and guidelines are applicable across Lean product development and lean production (such as waste reduction), many applications of lean processes for development have focused more on the production approach. The purpose of production is to manufacture products reliably within the margins of control. The flow of value is physically evident, and the link between cause and effect is easy to see. For example, feedback on adjusting the speed of production is immediately realized in an increase or decrease in rejected items. Any decisions made must be based on best practice. On the other hand, the purpose of product development is to design new products that improve the lives of customers. This is a complex space where the flow of value can only be discerned at an abstract level and where cause and effect might be separated by time and space. For example, feedback on the decision to design a certain feature will not be received until the product has been built and is in the hands of the customer. This means that decisions are made on short-cycle experimentation, prototyping, set-based design, and emergent practice. A premium is placed on creating reusable knowledge and reducing risk at handover points. An essential point about these differences is summarized in the advice Jim Womack gave Harley Davidson: "Don't try to bring lean manufacturing upstream to product development. The application of Lean in product development and manufacturing are different. Some aspects may look similar, but they are not! Be wary of an expert with experience in lean manufacturing who claims to know product development." The most common high-level concepts associated with lean product development are:

Creation of re-usable knowledge. Knowledge is created and maintained so that it can be leveraged for successive products or iterations. Set-based concurrent engineering. Different stages of product development run simultaneously rather than consecutively to decrease development time, improve productivity, and reduce costs. Teams of responsible experts. Lean product development organizations develop cross-functional teams and reward competence building in teams and individuals. Cadence and pull. Managers of lean product development organizations develop autonomous teams, where engineers plan their work and work their plans. Visual management. Visualization is a main enabler of lean product development. Entrepreneurial system designer. The lean product development organization makes one person responsible for the engineering and aesthetic design, and market and business success, of the product. Flow management.

Results of Lean Product Development Lean product development has been claimed to produce the following results:

Increase innovation ten-fold Increase introduction of new products 400%-500% Companies such as Toyota can attribute their success to lean product development. In 2000, Toyota launched 14 new products, a larger product line than GM's entire product offering. At that point, Toyota had just 70,000 employees while GM had more than five times as many.

Applicability of lean product development Researchers divide product development projects according to their need drivers:

Wished: there is no such product on the market, only a wish for such a product. These projects can be on the edge of what is possible to do. Wanted: there are only a few basic similar products on the market that usually require improvement. Needed: there are enough products in existence so knowledge about this is abundant on the market. For example, the mobile phone was dubbed to many as a, "wanted" product in the 1990s as it was described as being, "on the leading edge of technology." Today it is regarded as a "needed" product because of its common state in the modern market. Product development methods can be classified according to whether they are focused on handling stable or non-stable conditions. Lean product development is a dynamic method of product development that handles unstable conditions. The influence of need drivers and stability (or lack of stability) on product development are illustrated in the table below.

See also Design for lean manufacturing Lean startup Lean project management Muntzing Toyota Production System COLETEK Product Development is an example of an AI-based cloud platform for lean product development.

Notes and references

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Lean product development

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Lean product development claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Lean product development before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Lean product development ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Lean product development

In research: Lean product development appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Lean product development in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Lean product development is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Design, Environmental design, Lean manufacturing, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Lean product development outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Lean product development in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Lean product development means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Lean product development out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Lean product development in simple terms?

Why does Lean product development matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Lean product development?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Lean product development.