Never use Lean Manufacturing techniques for Lean Design efforts

Why? The design space is radically different from the manufacturing space. The process of manufacturing is linear, visible, and measurable. The manufacturing process lends itself to visual mapping, charting the manufacturing steps of an existing process and then identifying the process steps that can be eliminated or changed.

This is not so with the design space. The design space is chaotic. With Lean Manufacturing, the goal is to eliminate wasteful steps. With Lean Design, the goal is to prevent waste before it ever makes it to the manufacturing floor. However, Lean Design is far more than just waste prevention.

Lean Design is also value optimization. Values are benefits the product must deliver to the user. For example, values for users can include Affordability, Performability, Maintainability, and more. There are also internal values to consider such as Produceability, Deliverability, Costability and more.

A successful Lean Design process can be captured in four words: Optimize Values, Prevent Waste.

Every product is the sum of the tasks required to create the values it is intended to deliver. These tasks begin at the front end such as designing and extend to the end of its life cycle. Every task takes time, hence costs money, and if improperly done, will result in a quality flaw. A first step must be to eliminate all tasks that are not benefiting the values. The Huthwaite Lean Design Method gives a systematic way to do this.

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Bart Huthwaite has coached thousands of product design teams worldwide. His books include “Lean Design Solution”, “Rules of Innovation” and many more.