Lean Product and Process Development Exchange, Inc.

The Lean Product and Process Development Exchange, Inc. is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization created to foster opportunities to grow and share the knowledge, expertise and experiences that help organizations use lean product development to dramatically improve product development performance.

Value Statement

LPPDE grows and spreads the lean product and process development knowledge base, by providing opportunities for knowledge exchange between lean product development leaders and learning experiences for product developers at all stages of their lean journeys.

Strategy Statement

LPPDE’s primary purpose is to promote more effective conceptualization, development and delivery of products and services to the marketplace. We are primarily a knowledge-driven enterprise, focused on:

1. Creating a deeper understanding of tools and concepts associated with “lean product and process development,” including issues of implementation;

2. Disseminating this knowledge into the marketplace of ideas; and

3. Supporting early adopters.

We accomplish this through knowledge dissemination and exchange events, such as the annual conference, webinars, workshops and publications. We design the events to address the real (whether implicit or explicit) needs of the market. We take maximum advantage of external resources to produce events with sufficient quality that the venue does not detract from message, and ideally promotes the primary aims above.

Our target audience consists of leaders in small, medium and large organizations where product/process and service development are strategically important to the sustainability of the organization. We want to influence the thinking and behavior of organizations, and help them with wide-spread and sustained implementation.

Our secondary targets are the front-line practitioner who needs tools and practical guidance in order to apply the concepts in their daily work, and influence their leadership in the right directions; and the academic institutions who develop front-line practitioners.

Critical to our success is developing partnerships with individuals and organizations with synergistic aims and with widely acknowledged credibility in areas relevant to lean product & process development.

 

• Board Chair: Durward K. Sobek II, Ph.D., Professor at Montana State University
• Event Chair & Treasurer: Katherine Radeka, President, Whittier Consulting Group, Inc.
• Michael N. Kennedy, President, Targeted Convergence Corporation
• Jim Huntzinger, Founder, Lean Accounting Summit and TWI Summit
• Secretary: Rich Gildersleeve, Senior Vice President of Research & Development, DJO, Inc.

We would like to thank these individuals for their support and encouragement:

• Founding Board Member, Tricia Sutton, President, Sutton Enterprises Inc. for help with our early organizational efforts.
• Jamie Flinchbaugh of the Lean Learning Center for planting the seed many moons ago.
• John Shook and Helen Zak of the Lean Enterprise Institute for taking a chance on us.
• Sharon Brown for expert event coordination so that we can focus on content, not logistics.
• Mona Chisholm for helping us manage all the details.