Visible Knowledge for Flawless Design: The Secret Behind Lean Product Development

Visible knowledge is a tool nearly lost in the West, but it has been used to great effect by Toyota in its 50-year march from noncompetitiveness to its current status as the second largest automobile company in the world. It is key for the 50% growth in market share Toyota plans for this decade despite worldwide overcapacity in the auto business. This book presents the reader with a systematic approach to create, capture, and display knowledge in a way that allows development teams to optimize the design of their products and production processes. Visible knowledge not only applies to knowledge management, but provides a means of collaboration to facilitate better decision-making in the development process. This book has evolved out of a manuscript that Allen Ward, the foremost U.S. expert on lean product development, was writing at the time of his untimely death. It is not intended to be a treatise of Lean product development methods. Quite the opposite―it is focused on one small piece, "visible knowledge." It is, however, one technique that Dantar Oosterwal and Durward Sobek have found to be very effective at Harley-Davidson and other places, and a tool that can make a difference whether used by itself or as a starting point for a larger journey into Lean product development. In completing this work, Oosterwal and Sobek kept the aim true to Allen’s original intent. The preface and first three chapters are essentially Allen’s original intellectual contribution. They have made editorial changes to improve readability and clarity of explanation. Throughout, they have attempted to preserve Allen’s voice in the writing, even keeping the narrative in first person as it was originally written. They have also added a fourth chapter that highlights some practical ways to apply the ideas presented in earlier chapters, illustrated with case examples from their experience.

Business & Money

Ward, Allen C.

Oosterwal, Dantar P.

K. Sobek II, Durward

Economics

Productivity Press

As understanding of lean and its application to the entire enterprise has deepened, organizations find that they need resources to help them perform core business tasks in new, more effective ways. One of the most critical of these tasks is new product development. The Lean Enterprise Institute is honored to publish Lean Product and Process Development, by Allen Ward, one of the pioneers in the study and practice of lean product development. In this breakthrough text, Ward asks basic questions that drive at the fundamentals of product development, and observes the sources (a.k.a. wastes) of the most common maladies that plague many product development organizations. He distills what might be termed cornerstones from the practices of lean product developers, which differ remarkably from conventional practice. Ward uniquely melds observations of effective teamwork from his military background, engineering fundamentals from his education and personal experience, design methodology from his research, and theories about management, cognition, and learning from his understanding of history and interactions with clients. With Lean Product and Process Development, Ward carries the implications of his theories into specific, practical recommendations, and employs systems thinking in all aspects of thought and investigation.

Lean Product and Process Development

Management & Leadership

Lean Enterprises Inst Inc

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Ward, Allen C.. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Ward, Allen C.