The LeanPPD project is addressing the need of European manufacturing companies for a new model that goes beyond lean manufacturing to ensure the transformation of the enterprise into lean environment. This is to respond to  customers and market demands for value creation incorporating sustainability, culture and customisation. A significant change in enterprise performance can come from the adoption of lean thinking throughout the entire product life cycle.

The aim of LeanPPD is to develop a new model based on lean thinking that will consider entire product life cycle, providing a knowledge based environment to support value creation to the customers through innovation and customization, and delivering high quality, more sustainable and affordable products. This will be called Lean Product and Process Development (LeanPPD) paradigm.

LeanPPD Model and Tools

The project is developing a comprehensive set of lean methods, design techniques, and tools that ensure the concurrent consideration and development of lean product design as well as the associated lean manufacturing systems. The LeanPPD Model will be tested and validated by the industrial partner companies. Thanks to this industrial involvement, a road map for the incorporation of the LeanPPD Model will be exploited in the European business arena at the end of the project.

Specifically the model has four tools to provide as an outcome of the research project,

• The LeanPPD Assesement and Transformation Tool (A&T): this tool can be used to assess the level of leanness of a new product design and development process.

• The LeanPPD Product development Value Mapping Tool (PD-VMT): this tool will be used to take a snapshot of a development process to identify value adding and non value adding activities and a subsequent help to stream line the process.

• The LeanPPD Set-Based Lean Design Tools (SBLD): this tool transforms the traditional “point based” engineering method to “Set-based concurrent engineering” design methods, by front-loading a design phase with multiple solutions and then choices are narrowed until a superior solution is found. This tool will help to minimize future design and engineering changes and eliminate waste early in product design. Potential solutions are developed in parallel until the last responsible moment for a decision.

• The LeanPPD Knowledge-Based Engineering Environment (KBEE): this tool will help to acquire, retrieve and re-use tacit and explicit product knowledge that has been gained in a design project for subsequent uses.