Lean Product Development ─ A Manager's Guide

Lean product development (LPD) is the application of lean principles to product development, aiming to develop new or improved products that are successful in the market. It is a crossfunctional activity that seeks to uncover product knowledge hidden within the end-to-end production flow, typically in the handover points between functional units. LPD deals with the complete process from gathering and generating ideas, through assessing potential success, to developing concepts, evaluating them to create a best concept, detailing the product, testing/ developing it and handing over to manufacture. LPD is performed against a background of continuously assessing and reducing risk of market failure.

Lean Product Development: A Manager’s Guide explains what needs to be done in order to successfully complete the complex task of developing products. It describes how to set up and run each project according to its particular needs and covers planning for profitability, cutting out waste, creating a market winner and how to control risk. It also contains some practical tools and techniques that help to cut time and cost. This book is essential reading for managers, project managers, engineers and developers in industry, and a handy primer for graduate and postgraduate engineering students.