Digitalization of a Lean Product Development Organization

Abstract

In manufacturing, lean strategies are already widely distributed and have been research topic for years. However, the transfer of lean strategies to administrative areas is current research area. Some companies already implemented lean strategies in engineering departments. But since product development is performed more and more in globally distributed project teams, analogous processes don’t work any longer. It becomes necessary to digitize the lean product development approaches. This paper gives a brief overview of the current state of research in the fields of lean management, distributed teams and digitalization. A short overview of existing project management software is given and the gap for the implementation of digital Lean Product Development (dLPD) is described. The last section shows the experience from the authors own projects and studies and explains a first orientation towards the implementation of dLPD and outlines the need for further research.