Lean Product Development | Glossary

Definition:

A practical approach to accelerating time to market through aggressive waste elimination in planning, resource management, design control and interdisciplinary communication.

Lean Product Development (LPD) compromises of driving waste out of the product development process, improving the way projects are executed and visualizing the product development process.

By closely examining the product development process from a lean perspective, the opportunities to drive out waste and increases value become obvious.

LPD capitalizes the Lean principles to meet the challenges in the Product Development.

Lean Product Development solves the following issues:

  • Reduction of long development cycle times
  • Reducing the high costs of development
  • Reduction of production costs
  • Redevelopment cycles

 

Further Reading:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lean_product_development

http://insights.btoes.com/resources/lean-production-and-product-development

 

Kanban System | Glossary

Definition:

The term  “Kanban” is a Japanese word which means “signal-card” in English and it invented by Industrial engineer “Taiichi Ohno” in order to improve efficiency at Toyota.

In manufacturing environment, this card signals upstream process to produce more.  The Kanban System used as a simple planning system, in which one can control and manage work and inventory at every stage of production optimally. Kanban is a concept identified with Lean and just-in-time (JIT), it is used in the planning which  clearly tells you

  • what to produce?
  • when to produce it?
  • how much to produce?

in a systematic way of approach, that will match inventory with demand and achieve higher levels of quality and throughput.

Application of this in knowledge work, especially in software engineering would enable a sustainable pace and find an approach to introduce changes with minimal resistance.  Kanban System helps to change the focus from a push to meet demand forecasts to a pull generated by actual demand.

Future Reading:

Book: “KANBAN A Successful Evolutionary Change for Your Technology Business” by David J Anderson

https://leankit.com/learn/kanban/what-is-kanban

http://www.everydaykanban.com/what-is-kanban

https://tallyfy.com/kanban-system