Page 105 - Design for Six Sigma a Roadmap for Product Development

80 Chapter Three

3.4.2 Lean knowledge and
information management
As we discussed in Sec. 3.2, the product development process is about
knowledge and information creation. Specifically, the product develop-
ment process consists of information mining, information transforma-
tion, and knowledge creation. An ideal product development process
should be such that it creates information and knowledge at the high-
est efficiency, speed, and quality. At the same time, the waste of infor-
mation and knowledge in the product design is at a minimum. In
actual product development processes, however, the waste of informa-
tion and knowledge is difficult to see and is running rampant in many
companies. An effective knowledge and information management sys-
tem is crucial in a lean product development process. In this subsec-
tion, we discuss the following approaches in lean knowledge and
information management.

Knowledge and information supermarket. As we discussed earlier, the
lean production system is based on the pull concept. The pull concept
is derived from the supermarket inventory replenishment practice. In
knowledge and information management, the concept of supermarket
is also very appealing. In today’s electronic information technology, we
do not need to consume and store multiple copies of information.
However, the knowledge and information could become outdated and
obsolete from time to time. The meaning of knowledge and information
supermarket is the following:

1. The information and knowledge are always fresh and up-to-date.
2. The information and knowledge are sufficient to serve all the needs
of the product development.
3. We know where each bit of information and knowledge is stored.
4. The information is ready to be pulled at the right time, the right
kind, and right amount.

A good information and knowledge supermarket will greatly reduce
the time and resources spent in retrieving and searching for informa-
tion, misalignments in the product development projects, knowledge
recreation, and reinvention.
Toyota’s V-Comm system (Morgan and Liker 2006) is a knowledge
and information management system that is close to our information
and knowledge supermarket concept. V-Comm stands for “visual and
virtual communication” for Toyota. V-Comm was initially launched in
1996, as a “digital build” software, and it is improved continuously. In
2001, V-Comm became more mature, and it helped Toyota to slash the