In studying manufacturing over the past two decades, we have learned that operational excellence is not achieved by just applying so-called “lean” practices to every process. It requires cultivating an aptitude and an expectation for continuous improvement within every employee.
Similarly, we learned from studying lean product development that people, not processes, make great products. We frequently encounter managers who think improvements in the development process will pay off in better products. But better products are created by developers working with better knowledge and supported by good design processes.
Tasks for Managers for Improving New Product Development
Several steps can be taken to advance the development of NPD people.
Make technical mastery an expectation of the organization and build it into the reward system. Toyota has made developing “towering technical competence” central in grooming new engineers and made mentoring fundamental to engineering leadership requirements. Ford Motor Co. created a technical maturity model for each functional area within body and stamping engineering and supported it in the way the company made job assignments, ran design reviews, and rewarded its engineers. Individuals were assessed on their technical capabilities according to the model, and then plans were made to increase the individual’s technical maturity and were incorporated into the individual’s performance evaluation. This created a strong incentive to to build deeper expertise, for which they were rewarded subsequently.
Second, you should develop design standards and use them. Develop and use design guides as the starting point of the next development project. Once you have design standards, you need to systematically update them based on the learning gained on each development project. Toyota and other companies set aside one to two weeks of the development project timeline to pause and reflect on what they have learned on the current project that should be incorporated into their design standards, and then they do the additional development work to codify that learning into a reusable format. Somebody has to own the design standards development process. The group of people who will be using them also must have a role to ensure that they are easy to use and relevant.
Regular (for example, weekly) technical design reviews with the explicit aim of developing people through action learning and cross-functional collaboration have to be held. Some of the key questions issues to be discussed are: (1) What is the design standard used for the particular component, device or test? (2) What is the improvement in the the current design compared to standard? and (3) Where are the data to prove the claimed improvement?
Fourth, ask the following questions about the organization’s formal development process.
Who is responsible for deeply understanding the customer, creating the system architecture, and coordinating efforts to ensure that all decisions align with customer interests?
What problems does the solution intend to solve for the customer, and what additional value should the company offer?
To what extent fixed aspects of the design (where no deviation from standard) versus the flexible aspects?
Are tricky and challenging issues identified early and efforts to put to solve them?
Are you investing enough resources to investigate the flexible areas?
Does that phase conclude with enough clarity and certainty about the remaining challenges of the project?
To what extent do process checkpoints encourage learning as opposed to meeting requirements or task lists?
Do you have the right number of checkpoints, do they occur at the right points in time, and are the right people involved?
Finally, you should take stock of the leadership culture within the organization. To support learning, ask the leadership team to focus on instructing and improving. Design and manufacturing standards (what we currently know about the product and the technical processes) are the main tools for deepening the organization’s understanding of products and production processes. Encouraging problem-solving to resolve performance gaps with standards deepens the autonomy and insight of the responsible developers. Developer capacity is further enhanced by asking revealing questions about what people should be learning and how they are learning it.
Great people make great products. The explicit aim of new product development process has to be to grow better developers, who are increasingly knowledgeable and capable of solving problems and generating new solutions. People and people systems are also the most important parts of a product development system, because people generate the knowledge necessary for innovation, and people apply that knowledge to designs for new products, new manufacturing systems, and more robust supply chains. (Rewrite once again)
http://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/why-learning-is-central-to-sustained-innovation/
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