Page 97 - Design for Six Sigma a Roadmap for Product Development

72 Chapter Three

TABLE 3.1 Product Development Performance Comparisons

North American
Measures Toyota automobile companies
Average engineering hours 1.7 3.1
per new vehicle development
(million hours)
Average development 46.2 60.4
time (months)
Employees per team 485 903
Ratio of delayed project 1 in 6 1 in 2
Achieve normal quality 1.4 11
after launch

Toyota’s product development system gained a lot of attention
(Morgan and Liker 2005, Kennedy 2003). However, there are many
other best practices as well, such as Apple computer’s iPod nano and
Samsung’s Design for Six Sigma practice; all have achieved great
successes. In this chapter, we will outline a lean product develop-
ment strategy that combines many best practices and several
sound design principles (Suh 1990, Nonaka 1995, Reinertsen 1997,
Huthwaite 2004).
There are many significant differences between the manufacturing
process and the product development process. For manufacturing
processes, what we are going to produce is very clear in the beginning;
the product that we produce has already been designed so the value
of the product is already known. For the product development process,
the value of the product is unknown until it is launched in the
marketplace. For the manufacturing process, the rework is treated as
a waste; for the product development process, iterative improvement
on product design is quite common. Even the goal of lean operation is
different between the manufacturing process and the product develop-
ment process. For manufacturing operation, the goal of lean operation
is to minimize the waste and increase the speed; for the product devel-
opment process, developing a top-notch product design that can lead to
high sales and high profitability is the goal, so we are trying to maxi-
mize the value of the designed product, as well as reduce waste, and
increase development speed.
Based on these differences, we can give the following definition to
the lean product development process:

The lean product development process is aimed to deliver greater
value in the product by using less resources by
■ Thoroughly capturing the voice of the customer and accurately
deploying the customer value into design