Lean Product Development

What is Lean Product Development?

Lean is perhaps the most important concept that has been introduced to increase efficiency in manufacturing in modern times. In today’s fierce economic climate, many global firms have attempted to expand the lean concept from manufacturing to Product Development (PD) in order to sustain competitiveness. However, PD is very different from manufacturing, and there exist few documented examples of successful implementation of Lean in PD, other than inside Toyota where the term implementation may be somewhat misleading. The reason for this is the basic nature of PD—its purpose, tasks, process, people and perception of value—makes the understanding and application of Lean very different from its counterparts in manufacturing. This course gives the participant key insights into the fundamentals of Lean PD, its implementation, methods and practical tools, following an interactive and practical approach for learning. The overall objective is to define a common starting point for successful implementation and continuous improvement as the most essential part of any Lean strategy in PD.

Dates

• Week 41, 06.10.25 - 10.10.25, from 08:45 to 16:30

Instruction

The course is organized into 5 intensive days of lectures. During these days, the lectures last from 08.45 to 16.30 each day. The course is a mixture of lectures and work in groups. Masterstudents and others taking courses for credit will work on a written assignment which is due 10 weeks after the end of the course. A completed course with approved written assignment will give 7.5 studypoints. Full attendance during the intensive course week is obligatory. The maximum amount of hours that can be missed is 4, duly justified.

What you will learn

The course is designed to fit both industry people and traditional students with a common desire to learn more about Lean PD. This course gives the participant knowledge of the following topics:

• Building sustainable and competitive enterprises through organization, leadership, strategies and operational practices for efficient and effective New-product development (NPD).
• The basic principles of lean and their translation to functional areas outside manufacturing.
• Lean product development fundamentals, the understanding of value (creation) and strategies to integrate the production and the knowledge value streams as a means to mitigate project risks.
• Seeing lean product development as a system within the total enterprise/business system, and understanding the main components and characteristics of such a framework.
• Insight into the most common tools for applying the lean concept to NPD, including risk mitigation, knowledge management, systematic problem solving and visual planning and management.
• Taking the concept from theory to industrial practice; including research state-of-the-art, implementation strategies and local demonstrator cases (from select companies).

Prices

The price for attending the course is NOK 25.000,- and includes supervision and grading of the written assignment.