History
In January of 2000, NCMS completed a 2 year
collaborative project entitled, Product Development
Process-Methodology and Performance Measures. This project, initiated
by GM/Delphi (now Delphi), included the additional participation of
Cincinnati Machine, Ortech, United Technologies Automotive (now Lear),
Texas Instruments (now Raytheon), and Sandia National Laboratories.
The goal of the project was to determine how to make substantial
improvements, not just incremental improvements, in product
development lead times by studying the methodologies of world class
companies that had distinguished themselves by being fast to market
with the highest quality products.
As the project progressed, it quickly became obvious to the team that
studying, or benchmarking, other people’s processes would not achieve
the desired result. These processes had been flow charted,
benchmarked, and copied many times over without significantly reducing
product development cycle times. What the team did discover was that
the truly successful companies did not necessarily have superior
product development processes, but they actually functioned in a
totally different set of product development paradigms than the vast
majority of companies. Indeed, the findings of the team were that the
Toyota Motor Corporation was far and away the leading company for
product development success. Toyota product development efforts
produce new products twice as fast with as much as 4 times the
efficiency and productivity of its competitors. The enabling factors
for this success lie in their set of operational paradigms for product
development.
NCMS has documented the findings of that project and is now making
those findings available to its members and others through it Lean
Product Development Initiative (LPDI). The project results were so
significant to some of the partners, that two of them have now written
management books on the subject and NCMS is offering those, as well as
other products and services, through this initiative. This website
provides links to descriptions of the NCMS LPDI and its products and
services.
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