DESIGNING EXPERIENTIAL TRAINING IN LEAN PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT: A COLLABORATION BETWEEN INDUSTRY & ACADEMIA

Abstract

Performance and efficiency in R&D processes is a critical point for industry. Operational excellence in design and development is required to overcome the business challenges that companies face. It is the case in semiconductor industry where products have to be developed rapidly whilst maintaining a high level of quality. Study of design practices in aerospace have illustrated that only about 10% of design activity is spent on creating value [1]. If this number appears alarming for a great number of managers, many engineers participating in design activity agree that practices could be improved to address issues in efficiency and performance. Lean product development is viewed as a global approach that offers a framework to address design performance [2]–[4]. This approach has been chosen by a large microelectronics company to transform the practice of its process and product engineer on the scale of its global footprint. This paper will present how a collaboration between academics and Industry initiated in the context of local ecosystem partnership led to the design of a training program. The approach inspired from design thinking principles was developed by an interdisciplinary team of lean experts from the company, Researchers in R&D efficiency, Specialists in Pedagogy, Specialists in serious game design from academia, Project management experts and Engineers from the company. Intense collaboration within an interdisciplinary team, rapid prototyping including engineers from the company, observers from university, quick learning loop and feedback, allowed to develop the training program. This collaboration favoured discussion in terms of expectations of company and setting up the foundation of the training program including constraints of deployment up to 2000+ targeted people worldwide. The program include 2 days of face to face using experiential learning [5] and one accompanying day later with implementation progress monitoring and return and sharing on experience as a whole. Two serious games were designed, a case study and problem-based learning session were developed to introduce the main concepts chosen as the heart of the program. The last afternoon was used to workshop on participants own problems. A community of practice with a collaborative platform and in vivo sharing sessions supports the transformation. The paper discusses the training design process, hypothesis and objectives. All stakeholders learnt from this design thinking approach, leading to innovative training co-creation and demonstrating the richness of interdisciplinary teamwork and relevance of a user-centered approach for lifelong learning training design References [1] J. Oehmen and E. Rebentisch, “Waste in Lean Product Development,” LAI Pap. Ser., no. July, pp. 1–35, 2010. [2] M. S. Khan et al., “Towards lean product and process development,” Int. J. Comput. Integr. Manuf., vol. 26, no. 12, pp. 1105–1116, Dec. 2013. [3] J. M. Morgan and J. K. Liker, The Toyota Product Developement System: Integrating People Process and Technology. New York: Productivity press, 2006. [4] D. G. Reinertsen, The principles of Product Development Flow. Second Generation Lean Product Development. Celeritas Publishing, 2009. [5] D. A. Kolb, Experiential Learning: Experience as the Source of Learning and Development, 2nd editio. pearson education, 2014.