Implementation of a New Lean Innovation Strategy

Bernd Fuhrmann; Patrick Garcia; Gregg DeSilvio

doi:10.4271/2007-01-0531

2007-04-16

Implementation of a New Lean Innovation Strategy 2007-01-0531

New ideas and innovations are the key to ongoing future success for companies. Many idea generating tools exist in the marketplace. It is of paramount importance to integrate and monitor innovation within a lean company process. Ideas without execution are merely dreams with low likelihood that they will come to fruition. We have identified two main strategies can be highlighted to generate innovations.

One strategy is to “think out of the box” and find new markets without having an actual product (development to occur after the market is identified).

This is more of a process. The second - more product oriented - is a antilogy strategy which is very complex and breaks the product down to the real physics to define contradictions and resolve them. Here you start with product development and then try to find a market. In both cases there are many new ideas generated in brainstorming sessions. These ideas have to be rated with precise and effective tools, to gain focus on the right ideas for future development. Therefore, a business case as a company standard needs to be defined and used.

After identifying the key ideas for the company, some standard project management tools are necessary to initiate and drive the new projects.

During the project run time, a need exists for the company, to monitor and control the project in terms of both cost and project goals. Therefore a Light PDC tool was developed (following the comprehensive standard Project Developing Cycle) to track and report quarterly status to management in a simple, standard and project comprehensive manner. This tool enables the “go” or “no go” status during the innovation project run time. In addition, it helps assure that project costs remain in check and are not spent prior to a definitive need.

At the end, the link to a serial project has to be set. The link consists of deliverables such as function, durability reports and ability to manufacture.

The details of the lean process and the different stages are outlined in this paper.

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Implementation of a New Lean Innovation Strategy 2007-01-0531

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