Lean Enterprise Product Development for Practitioners

LAI has a rich history of innovative lean product development research and work. Drs. Josef Oehmen and Eric Rebentisch are producing a new series of whitepapers, Lean Product Development for Practitioners. Look for regular installments in this new series throughout 2011.

LAI on Program Management for Large Scale Engineering Programs
Available to the public.

Risk Management in Lean Enteprise Product Development
Available to the public.

Dr. Josef Oehmen and Dr. Eric Rebentisch, LAI Paper Series: Lean Enterprise Product Development for Practitioners, Version 1.0, March 2010.

A vast amount of research has been conducted at MIT´s Lean Advancement Initiative (LAI) on Lean Product Development in the last 15 years. For the first time, this series of papers makes this research accessible to practitioners in a condensed form. The aim is to provide an application-oriented, readable, concise and comprehensive overview of the main fields of Lean Product Development. The papers follow LAI´s understanding and Risk Management in Lean Product Development philosophy regarding Lean Management concepts and especially their integration into large and complex Enterprise settings.

The papers draw mainly on the research done by LAI. Where necessary to ensure a comprehensive presentation of a topic, findings of other researchers and research groups from the field of Lean Product Development are integrated into the papers. The series focuses on 15 topics in three major areas of Lean Product Development that LAI identified. The processes span the space from single project to project portfolio management. This paper addresses topic 9, Risk Management.

The two core challenges of risk management are finding the optimum balance a) between the cost of carrying risks vs. the cost of mitigating risks and b) between a risk that is taken with a certain development project and the return that is expected from the project.

Waste in Lean Enterprise Product Development
Available to the public.

Josef Oehmen and Eric Rebentisch, LAI Paper Series: Lean Product Development for Practitioners, Version 1.1, July 2010.

The main objective of this paper is to make the work that has been done at LAI in the area of waste in product development easily accessible to the consortium members. The focus of the discussion in this paper is therefore on past LAI work. Non-LAI work is integrated into the presentation where it is necessary to complete the picture.

The intended readership is engineers and managers in the areas of product development, product design, systems engineering and program management. The paper is also intended to provide a first overview to students and others interested in the field.

Reading this whitepaper provides a concise overview of the most important waste drivers in product development, that is, the most common project deficiencies that lead to cost and schedule overrun, as well as to performance issues. It will enable those involved in process improvement initiatives to include specific lean-related factors into their process analysis. It provides both managers and engineers with a common language and concepts to enhance the efficiency of their product development projects.

About This Series

LAI has conducted a vast amount of research on lean enteprise product development in the last 15 years. For the first time, this series of papers makes this research accessible to practitioners in a condensed form. Our aim is to provide an application-oriented, readable, concise, and comprehensive overview of the main fields in lean product development. The papers are based on LAI´s philosophy regarding lean management concepts and especially their integration into large and complex enterprise settings.

The papers draw mainly on LAI research. Where necessary to ensure a comprehensive presentation of a topic, findings from other researchers and research groups are integrated into the papers. The series focuses on 15 topics in three major areas. The processes span the space from single projects to project portfolio management.

I: Processes for Value-Orientation

The processes for value-orientation address those types of processes that ensure a focus on the creation of value and the elimination of waste in lean product development. This covers the areas of stakeholder needs generation, trade space exploration and decision making, as well as the identification and handling of value and waste in the core PD processes.

II: Processes for Enterprise Integration

Enterprise Integration is one of the main challenges in developing a lean enterprise. Product development plays a central role in this integration effort because it interfaces with all major enterprise processes. This therefore larger group consists of the processes of enterprise, program and multi-project management, performance metrics and measurement, product architecture and commonality management, risk management, IT systems, HR development and human capital, and PD teams.

III: Processes for Efficient Execution

This group addresses the challenges surrounding the efficient execution of PD processes. It includes the relationship of PD to overall enterprise process improvement initiatives, enabling organizational factors within lean PD, and addressing alternative Lean PD core process principles.