Lean in product development

A number of companies are using the lean concept in product development.Aberdeen Group's research is t indicating

both the value and the rising adoption of lean.

The presentations in  the product innovation summit touched on the lean concepts more or less in a good way.


Last year's Product Innovation Summit featured Mark Edmonson of Raytheon speaking about the beginnings of a lean  strategy at his company, and this years Manufacturing Summit featured a presentation from Pfizer on Lean R&D. So  lean outside of manufacturing has clearly been on the agenda.

"Taking Lean Principles Upstream" into R&D was the discussed in a great way in the summit.

The  recent benchmark reports from Aberdeen Group have highlighted the value of Lean.

In May of 2007, Aberdeen published a benchmark on Lean Product Development. That benchmark indicated that

• Best-in-Class companies are 3 times more likely to have had lean product development in place for more than a year.

• Another benchmark, the Product Innovation Agenda 2010 indicated that lean will grow significantly, with adoption of lean concepts in product development growing from 18% at the end of 2007 to a planned adoption of 62% by 2010 (over 3x growth). The research has been consistent, lean is much more common in the top-performing companies, and growing in adoption.

Engineers and product development people may not react well to the term "lean." Because it is so well established in  manufacturing, it leads people to say that it won't work for them. Common comments including "innovation isn't linear like manufacturing" or "product development is iterative" may be true, but shouldn't be used to imply that lean doesn't work outside of manufacturing. Lean Manufacturing doesn't work outside of manufacturing, but lean concepts work across the enterprise and - as seen in the presentations and the research - work in product development, R&D, and Engineering. While some companies have a lean culture and used "lean" as a way to validate and justify their plans, others have made the word "lean" taboo in their programs. I guess it comes down to knowing your organization, but it's good to be senstitive to the issue either way.