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4/17/2017

Quick Reference Sheets
The Institute for Strategic Improvement is offering an introductory price for our 1 page Quick Reference Sheet Collection. When you make this purchase for only $24.99 you receive a new Quick Reference Sheet each week via email for 1 full year as a subscription service. That's 52 per year. Each week we email you a new one. These are process improvement, project management, Lean, Six Sigma, Quality Management, Personal efficiency and other Business Improvement Topics.

If you need a specific one email us and we will add it to our collection and send to you.

That's $24.99 for a complete years worth.

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Product cost optimization

4/12/2017

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Product cost optimization involves optimizing the way you develop your products. Organizations have a number of ways that they optimize their product cost which include:

Value engineering - which includes optimizing material cost and balancing engineering aspects to reduce the overall material costs of product.

Standardization - which improves simplification during high-volume manufacturing, improvement of part ordering, and reduction in cost of maintenance.

Lean product development - which is used to optimize linear manufacturing processes improving how you develop products on the manufacturing floor.

Modularization-which includes separating each piece of a manufacturing system into corresponding subsystems then building the best value for each of the subparts including waste reduction and design continuity.

Product optimization is many times thought of as a cost reduction activity. Ultimately, businesses look at optimizing the concept in engineering design components, supply chain costs, the manufacturing process, and then optimizing service and support costs.

The most common opportunities include refinement of supplier communication gaps, implementation of project management skills, and culture changes.

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Lean Product Development

4/4/2017

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Lean product development
Evidence of lean product development and lean process development is growing each day. Lean process and product development is a way of achieving waste-free operations for your business. The process is simple - simplify all of your activities and continuously improve. Each process should respect employees and the environment.

Lean development values, process flow, simplicity, business partnerships, and visualization of your work.
Using lean development businesses are able to rely less on inventory and more so on just in time production.

The keys to lean development include:
Value stream mapping
Just in time inventory
Kaizen
Jidoka

These tools are used to identify value added and non-value added activities that best meet the customers’ requirements. Lean product development incorporates intellectual activity into the reiterative process of development which includes defining, analyzing, testing, comparing, choosing, specifying, and documenting.

This intellectual activity is applied by a full review of processes, tools, and employees. Here are some steps you can use in lean product development.

Establish customer value and determine value added activities as well as those that cause waste
Determine alternative solutions which maximize your space.
Establish a leveled product development process flow.
Reduce variation through standardization.
Adapt technology to fit your employees and your process.
Engage in organizational learning.
Develop cross functional expertise.
Build a culture of excellence and improvement.

To further improve on these there are a number of methodologies you can use in your product development including:

FMEA
TRIZ
Lifecycle analysis
Process capability
Robust design
Design of experiments
Quality function deployment

Most importantly, value your people and your process to continuously improve.

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Product cost optimization

Lean Product Development

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