Lean manufacturing gets lots of ink, and rightfully so. Applying its principles using a range of techniques drives waste off the manufacturing floor.

Experts say the same principles can be applied to design organizations. Waste in the engineering department is anything that does not add value to designs taking shape. So waste can be a long walk to a printer, documents that need attention yet sit in in-baskets for days, and bells and whistles on products that customers did not ask for.

Lean design is actually an umbrella that covers a lot of techniques, such as finding the voice of the customer, design for assembly and manufacturing, and project boards. Capturing the voice of the customer, for example, might be done by sending designers to client shops and offices to see how they use products. The ideas designers bring back can be put into special charts for analysis. A lean design should also be easy to manufacture, so design for manufacturing principles apply.

An example of how well lean techniques work comes from a sporting equipment manufacturer that wanted to accelerate its introduction of new products. “It had more ideas than it could develop, and trade shows were a big part of its sales effort,” says Ron Mascitelli, an instructor of lean-design principles and president of Technology Perspectives Inc., Northridge, Calif. design-for-lean.com. “For instance, when the company had new products at shows, it took new bookings. But new product introductions away from trade shows were only half as efficient. So introducing more products at trade shows became one tactic for increasing sales. The company initiated a lean design program with next-step training every six months. In the three years since it began, the company went from introducing about 70 new products per year to about 130. What's more, net return has been averaging 7% more profit, and they have almost doubled their sales.”

Getting started

Experts say design departments know they need a shake-up when they feel the impact of high manufacturing costs or their time-to-market is too long, or both. “In one case the company is wasting money, and the other it's wasting time. Indicators that new thinking is needed include company products becoming commodities and competitors winning more races,” says Mascitelli.

“A design department based on lean principles can reverse both those problems,” says Bill Cloke, training director at Grant Thornton Productivity Improvement, Toronto, (grantthornton.com). “A lean design team finds what the customer values in a product and eliminates everything else. There are two sides to the effort. One is the design process which runs with a minimum of waste. And then products are designed for manufacturing in a lean way — without waste.” Experts agree that lean design and manufacturing go pretty much hand-in-hand.

So the big question is: How can a manager transform an organization from traditional workflow to a lean one? Where does the group start?

“First, learn something about lean,” says Cloke. “There is a lot of information on the Web. After that you might look for a consortium or professional organization of those who have made the transition and are willing to share their experience. Try the Association for Manufacturing Excellence at ame.org. It shares ideas on improving processes by getting lean.”

Like other shifts in a design group, a reorganization to lean principles needs executive buy-in. Mascitelli suggests getting executives to say the transformation to lean design is important to the company. “Otherwise they may become obstacles to success. It's not essential they actively participate but at least get them out of the way and let the engineering departments do things that are different. Then enfranchise as many people as possible by bringing them into training to sample the tools.

“We've tried selective training — a small team, just designers, or only manufacturing engineers. But as soon as they contact any support or interdisciplinary function that has not been trained, it's like hitting a brick wall,” says Mascitelli. “Those that don't know the tools think lean teams are arrogant, and don't want strange ideas pushed on them. And the effort dies. Training across business units on product-development functions is most effective,” he adds.

Mascitelli says an initial two-day workshop gives teams enough information to get going. A workshop starts with selecting projects based on their opportunities and extends to the shop floor. “There are tools and techniques at each step for spotting and solving particular wasteful situations, such as poor communications,” he says. The training works for most any process. Training introduces techniques or new operations that work for a particular company and lets them find ways that fix what's wrong with their process.” Initial training gives a design team the vision to spot waste and lets them feel waste can be overcome, that it's not so intrinsic to business it must be tolerated.

Tools of the Trade

A lean-design department relies on a range of tools and techniques that traditional departments do not. A few tools include mapped value streams, QFD, DFM, DFA, stand-up meetings, and project boards. Take the value stream, for instance. “It describes the process the team is improving,” says Cloke. A team effort designing the map is more likely to hit on all the points along the way. “In a manufacturing organization, it's a picture of all steps in the process from beginning to end as a time line. At each step, an engineer or designer tells how long it takes to perform the step for one unit, drawing, or concept. And if processing more than one kind of thing through this operation, list how long it takes to switch over from one type to another. Look for delays and things that can go wrong. The point is to understand the opportunities to knock waste out of the process by looking at the capacity of each step,” he says.

“But the goal of mapping product development differs from mapping factory operations,” adds Mascitelli. In recurring production, variability is the enemy. But the design department's goal is to be different, innovative, and creative every time. So the nonrecurring aspect allows more flexibility in implementing any new process. “A creative-process flow needs branches and decision points that spin a design in many iterations before going to market. The team has to be willing to embed risk and creativity elements into the value stream. It's not just turning a crank,” he says.

Between every operation on the map, a design or product may sit and wait in a work-in-process inventory. “For the design department, it's probably an inbox. It's important to know how much stuff is waiting for each operation and how long it waits,” says Cloke. Then calculate lead time for the process. “For example, if we're talking about a design, add all the time the item is worked on. In a second calculation add all the time it sits and waits between operations. We're looking for how long a concept takes to transform into manufacturing drawings,” he says.

Results vary depending on the business or product. “It's not unusual to see raw material transform to a finished manufactured product in two weeks. But the actual work time may be only a few minutes. In traditional organizations, materials and designs spend a lot of time just sitting. In manufacturing companies just beginning the journey, the percent of actual work time often totals less than one percent. Look for the biggest causes of waste, in particular, the biggest lead-time issues, and look for ways to reduce those.

One of the biggest issues in a design department is multitasking. A VP may want the design department to finish six products in one quarter, so it works on all six at one time. But the department doesn't focus well and probably doesn't get them done. “As it turns out, departments are actually better at focusing on one project at a time and completing it,” says Cloke. “Things that cause a team to switch back and forth drives inefficiency. So avoid multitasking. Of course, it is difficult to avoid. One technique for handling it documents what you are doing before a project shift so it's relatively easy to put one project down and pick up another. That way, when the electrical engineer shifts projects until a mechanical design comes back, he stays productively busy and transitions smoothly.”

More Tools

After 20 years of thinking of quality as king, some rethinking is in order. “For instance, can a design overshoot on quality?” asks Mascitelli. “The truth is, you can overshoot on quality. For example, consider a product built so it does not fail in 50 years. That would be useful for a house roof, but not so for a laptop computer. Who would pay for that in a fast changing market? So build quality up to the expectation of the market,” he says.

How do you decide what the customer wants? “In some organizations the ideas come from everywhere — sales, application engineering, and anyone,” says Mascitelli. Another way is by letting a designer spend several days on a client's site. Designers then develop an empathetic understanding of client needs.

Other tools include Quality Function Deployment (QFD), another way of deciding what a customer wants. QFD can be powerful. “But with people using it for huge projects such as large aircraft, some versions have grown cumbersome,” says Mascitelli. One recent experience took a week to come up with the same answer you could have guessed at. “So a lot of people have walked away from it,” he adds. Mascitelli says he uses a QFD tool that has been leaned out and focused on waste reduction. “It's more of a surgical-decision tool than a week-long exercise,” he adds.

DFM and DFA focus on improving the cost of the product. “They work well stripping away assumptions and ending with a more raw look at requirements and needs. They encourage brainstorming, coming up with alternatives, and ranking them to see if one works better than others.

When designing the product, think also of its manufacturers, so they have as few steps as possible. This is where design-for-manufacturing and assembly techniques work well. They suggest, for instance, using standard fasteners and in minimum numbers.

Modular and platform design is big in terms of time-to-market. “Lean project-management tools such as stand-up meetings are also useful,” says Mascitelli. “These are 10 minute, early morning briefings, held daily before a project board, a visual tool showing project particulars such as status issues, problems, and outstanding actions. “The board gives urgency to a project. It can also make a 20 to 30% difference in time to market,” he says.

Once a team gets its feet wet with a value stream and project boards (about six months) take another step with more new tools, suggests Mascitelli. “These add to the discipline level and move the department forward. There is no end to improvement, but there is an end to economically reasonable improvement,” he says.

And when a project finishes, plan a short review to agree on what went well and what needs improving. “Continuous improvement in lean systems is called kaizen,” says Cloke. Look at the process and keep basic statistics. Tally how much time was spent at each design stage and look for holdups. And ask: How can we reduce lead time further?

A Lean Design Self-Assessment Quiz

The quiz was designed by Ron Mascitelli, president of Technology Perspectives, Northridge, Calif., (design-for-lean.com). “Of course, it's a qualitative self-assessment. Results tell how much your team or organization would benefit from applying lean design principles,” he says. The questions highlight common sources of product design waste. Answer the questions with Frequently, Sometimes, or Rarely.

1. Are new product development projects launched without well-defined cost targets?

2. Are requirements for new products based on sketchy or anecdotal market data?

3. Are features and performance specs defined without customers' direct involvement?

4. Do new product designs cause significant changes to factory layouts?

5. Do handoffs from design teams require corrections or iterations from factory teams?

6. Do new product designs incorporate several “one-use” or unique part numbers?

7. Is there little commonality between old and new products? Is the impact of a new product design on operating overhead ignored in development?

8. Is the cost of nonrecurring development not tracked and allocated to a specific new product?

9. Do designers tend to dig into details before seeking lower-cost design alternatives?

10. Is manufacturability considered too late in development to make needed changes?

11. Are engineering changes typically made after a new product enters the factory?

12. Are projected profit margins for new products higher than actual margins?

13. Do quality defects cause a significant amount of wasted time and materials?

14. Is there resistance to making manufacturability or other cost-reduction changes?

Score yourself this way: The answer Frequently earns 15 points, Sometimes earns five points, and nothing for Rarely. A total less than 50 suggests you just need a tune-up of best practices. From 50 to 100, your company could enjoy significant near term gains from a course in lean design. And over 100 means adopting lean principles could lead to dramatic and immediate improvements.

Free intro to DFM

Design for assembly and design for manufacturing (DFMA) is one way to improve products, reduce cost, and increase competitive advantage says Boothroyd Dewhurst Inc. The Wakefield, R.I., company (dfma.com) tells more in its white paper How to Use Design for Manufacture and Assembly to Slash Manufacturing Overhead, Make Products Competitive, and Bring New Efficiencies to the Manufacturing Process. It's available for download with registration from dfma.com/dfmawp.

The design techniques, part of a lean design department, helps organizations and their supply chains find the most cost-effective materials, manufacturing process, and assembly method for products. The paper describes how some companies apply DFMA to understand the cost structure of products and develop designs that are easier and less costly to produce. A few examples in the report come from Dell, Abbott Laboratories, and MDS Sciex.