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by Robert Allen Leave a Comment

Why DMAIC Endures as a Robust Thought Process

Why DMAIC Endures as a Robust Thought Process

From time-to-time, there are new ways of thinking or shortcuts to solving problems.  However, the tried-and-true Define-Measure-Analyze-Improve-Control (DMAIC) thought process endures as a fundamentally robust problem-solving thought process.

DMAIC must be properly applied to be effective, however.  In this article we’ll consider some important objectives within each DMAIC sub-process.

First, let’s consider each sub-process as an opportunity to perform collaborative problem solving.  In the “Define” phase (for example) the stakeholders and team members mutually agree on the problem statement, goals & objectives, process under study, process start/stop points, team members, business impact, etc.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Articles, on Leadership & Career, Product Development and Process Improvement Tagged With: Critical to Quality, customer value, Design for Six Sigma, DMAIC, lean manufacturing, lean six sigma, Project Management, six sigma

by Robert Allen Leave a Comment

Why Excellence May Not Be the Best

Why Excellence May Not Be the Best

When considering a business process improvement (or some other) initiative, we also want to communicate to motivate the right behaviors.  However, initiatives often seem to use buzzwords or use titles familiar to employees that have seen such initiatives come and go (the key word being “go”).

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Articles, on Leadership & Career, Product Development and Process Improvement Tagged With: agile product development, Critical to Quality, customer value, Design for Six Sigma, lean manufacturing, Lean Project Management, New Product Development, PLC process, product development, product life cycle, Project Management, six sigma

by Robert Allen Leave a Comment

What is Design for Assembly?

What is Design for Assembly?

In previous articles we covered design for six sigma and design for lean.  Now let’s take a look at Design for Assembly.  We’ll do this by following the Design for Six Sigma (DFSS) thought process, and add design for assembly (DFA) subtopics as follows:

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Articles, on Leadership & Career, Product Development and Process Improvement Tagged With: agile product development, Critical to Quality, customer value, Design for Assembly, Design for Six Sigma, New Product Development, PLC process, product development, product life cycle, Project Management, six sigma

by Robert Allen Leave a Comment

Why an owner of a task or deliverable doesn’t really exist…

Why an owner of a task or deliverable doesn’t really exist…

When it comes to ensuring a task or deliverable is accomplished, we often see the word “owner” used.  Perhaps surprisingly, there really is no true ‘owner’ of anything in the context of program or project management.

We can begin explaining this with two adjectives:  responsible and accountable.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Articles, on Leadership & Career, Product Development and Process Improvement Tagged With: agile product development, Critical to Quality, customer value, Design for Six Sigma, New Product Development, PLC process, product development, product life cycle, Project Management, six sigma

by Robert Allen 2 Comments

Design for Lean

Design for Lean

In this article series, we covered several topics in the area of product development and project management.  We will now begin to explore process improvement with the topic “Design for Lean”.  While design for lean may be a subtopic within product development, it helps us understand operational risks, operational costs, enables operational planning and process improvement.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Articles, on Leadership & Career, Product Development and Process Improvement Tagged With: agile product development, Critical to Quality, customer value, Design for Six Sigma, DFSS, DFx, New Product Development, PLC process, product development, product life cycle, Project Management, six sigma

by Robert Allen Leave a Comment

Critical Thinking for Product Development

Critical Thinking for Product Development

Previous articles have covered product development tools and methodologies such as lean product development, agile, design for six sigma, product life cycle (PLC) and project management processes.

In this article, lets consider “the product” being developed any hardware product, software, IT system, service or new business process.  We’ll use the acronym “PSSBP” (Product, Service, Software, Business Process) as an all-encompassing placeholder and to illustrate critical thinking on the topic as follows:

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Articles, on Leadership & Career, Product Development and Process Improvement Tagged With: agile product development, Critical to Quality, customer value, Design for Six Sigma, DFSS, DFx, New Product Development, PLC process, product development, product life cycle, Project Management, six sigma

by Robert Allen Leave a Comment

What is DFx?

What is DFx?

In a previous article, we defined design for six sigma (DFSS) as a thought process focused on maximizing customer value and minimizing cost.

More specifically, DFSS is used to reduce variability in product performance (thereby increasing value), using analytical models and our knowledge of manufacturing variability to enable specification limits on difficult-to-manufacture tolerances to be increased (thereby reducing cost).

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Articles, on Leadership & Career, Product Development and Process Improvement Tagged With: Critical to Quality, customer value, Design for Six Sigma, DFSS, DFx, New Product Development, PLC process, product development, product life cycle, Project Management, six sigma

by Robert Allen Leave a Comment

What is Design for Six Sigma?

What is Design for Six Sigma?

For the majority of organizations, long-term success is tied directly to the new product development process. Tomorrow’s revenue and growth are tightly bound to how successful you are at launching new products.

Offering genuinely valuable, high quality products is, more than ever, the best way to capture market share.  Also, more investment up-front minimizes overall expense.

…fewer design iterations to achieve the same goals (reduced time to market), more efficient production and delivery processes (reduced operating costs), fewer defects & warranty costs during the entire product life cycle (increased customer satisfaction).

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Articles, on Leadership & Career, Product Development and Process Improvement Tagged With: Critical to Quality, customer value, Design for Six Sigma, DFSS, New Product Development, PLC process, product development, product life cycle, Project Management, six sigma

by Robert Allen Leave a Comment

Statement of Work Fundamentals

Statement of Work Fundamentals

In my last article, we reviewed a proposed Product Life Cycle process, which starts with a “Define” phase.  In the “Define” phase, we are defining the project as well as the product.

We previously discussed the ‘technical leg’ of this process with the market analysis, identifying customer needs, product requirements, verification and validation, etc. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Articles, on Leadership & Career, Product Development and Process Improvement Tagged With: agile product development, customer value, Design for Six Sigma, design value chain, lean product development, Lean Project Management, New Product Development, portfolio analysis, product life cycle, product life cycle process, project governance, Project Management, requirements management, resource management

by Robert Allen Leave a Comment

A Proposed Product Life Cycle Process

A Proposed Product Life Cycle Process

In my previous article we covered the advantages of a phase and gate structure for new product development.  Now we can discuss some proposed phase names for a new product development or product life cycle (PLC) process.

An organization may have an existing PLC process ‘baked-in’ to their culture and process documentation.  Accordingly, there’s a wide range of PLC phase names, all of which are likely acceptable and based on solid reasoning.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Articles, on Leadership & Career, Product Development and Process Improvement Tagged With: agile product development, customer value, Design for Six Sigma, design value chain, lean product development, Lean Project Management, New Product Development, portfolio analysis, product life cycle, product life cycle process, project governance, Project Management, requirements management, resource management

by Robert Allen Leave a Comment

Phase and Gate Structure for New Product Development

Phase and Gate Structure for New Product Development

In previous articles we defined an element of lean as a phase and gate structure for new product development.  This assumes a waterfall approach to the project (versus agile product development).

A new product life cycle phase gate structure might entail, for example: “Definition, Concept, Design, Verification, Qualification, Production and End-of-Life”.  (Your organization might decide on different phase names.)

There’s an apparent contradiction in using a waterfall project approach and calling it lean project management, however.  A goal of any lean process is to work toward ‘single piece’ or continuous flow: agile product development is more like ‘single piece flow’ of information, versus waterfall which is more like ‘batch processing’ of information.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Articles, on Leadership & Career, Product Development and Process Improvement Tagged With: agile product development, customer value, Design for Six Sigma, design value chain, lean product development, Lean Project Management, New Product Development, portfolio analysis, project governance, Project Management, requirements management, resource management

by Robert Allen Leave a Comment

Lean Project Management for Product Development

Lean Project Management for Product Development

My last article covered a scalable model for lean product development depending on the number of projects and technical objectives.

Let’s start with the foundational elements from this model:

 

  • Facilitate a lean project
  • Understand customer needs (requirements validation and/or agile product development)
  • Maximize customer (product) value (product value estimation)

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Articles, on Leadership & Career, Product Development and Process Improvement Tagged With: agile product development, customer value, Design for Six Sigma, design value chain, lean product development, Lean Project Management, New Product Development, portfolio analysis, project governance, Project Management, requirements management, resource management

by Robert Allen Leave a Comment

A Scalable Model for Lean Product Development

A Scalable Model for Lean Product Development

In my previous article we established the lean product development goal statement as:

Develop products that maximize customer value and minimize product cost, in the least amount of time, and at the least amount of product development cost.

We then derived high-level objectives as follows:

  • Better understand the customer (maximize customer value)
  • Do the right projects (product, project and portfolio value analysis)
  • Do projects right (minimize redesigns, waste and rework)
  • Level load the organization (minimize bottlenecks and resource constraints)
  • Create and re-use artifacts (standardize and sustain best practices)

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Articles, on Leadership & Career, Product Development and Process Improvement Tagged With: agile product development, customer value, Design for Six Sigma, design value chain, lean product development, Lean Project Management, New Product Development, portfolio analysis, project governance, Project Management, requirements management, resource management

by Robert Allen Leave a Comment

What is Lean Product Development (Part III)

What is Lean Product Development (Part III)

 

In my previous article, we established some high-level objectives for lean product development as follows:

 

 

  • Better understand the customer (maximize customer value)
  • Do the right projects (product, project and portfolio value analysis)
  • Do projects right (minimize waste and rework)
  • Level load the organization (minimize bottlenecks and resource constraints)
  • Create and re-use artifacts (standardize and sustain best practices)

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Articles, on Leadership & Career, Product Development and Process Improvement Tagged With: agile product development, customer value, Design for Six Sigma, DFSS, lean manufacturing, lean product development, manufacturing value stream, New Product Development, portfolio management, project governance

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