Lean Leadership for Faster, Better, Cheaper PD

Date: Tuesday, May 1

Time: 9:00 a.m. - 4 p.m. with continental breakfast at 8:00 a.m. and lunch

$795 for full day workshop

What are the problems that plague most product development processes? Unclear or changing requirements? Delays and redo loops? Rejected designs? Missed deadlines? Unresolved problems that show up in production?

What’s the real issue here? Incompetent people or dysfunctional processes? Demming would say without hesitation that 99 percent of the time it’s the process. Toyota says they don’t look for a bunch of brilliant people. They want brilliant processes that average people can work with successfully. And who is ultimately responsible for the effectiveness and workable of a process? Leadership and management.

Most companies would respond, “But we have a well-defined PDP right there on the wall.” So where’s the problem? It may be in the expectation. A product development process is a plan and as Toyota people say, planning is absolutely critical but things never go according to plan. And that’s where the leader ship comes in. PD managers are responsible for taking “process” leadership to address the “design” problems that are built into most PD processes and for teaching the people who work in the processes how to deal with the problems that disrupt flow and affect quality.

The workshop will focus on three important practices that PD managers can use to create a culture for lean product development and help their PD processes perform faster, better and cheaper.

· Defining and engaging the organization in addressing the performance problems in most current product development process

· Understanding and creating product development processes that are based on knowledge creation and fast cycles of learning

· Changing the role of the product development leader to focus on fully engaging managers, designers, and engineers in a continuous learning model for significantly higher levels of performance in product development.

Topics that will be covered include:

§ Introduction to lean and the problem solving culture that drives it

§ Connecting PD to business problems and priorities

§ Fast cycles of learning and how they are used in PD

§ Changing the relationship between leader and followers

§ Creating systems for adaptation and continuous improvement