Enhancing Integrative Capabilities through Lean Product and Process Development

Abstract

To survive in today's hostile business environment, companies must constantly introduce new products and adapt their strategy to change. Managing product variety may therefore be considered as an important competitive factor. However, this requires resources in terms of people, equipment, inventory and raw material—all of which go against a Lean strategy. Mastering complexity becomes increasingly important in several industries, and companies must find a way to balance between lean and offering product variety. As robots become less expensive and more ‘intelligent’, in combination with more advanced CAM solutions, automated assembly may become beneficial at much lower quantities than in the past. Also, development of new manufacturing methods may enable new product designs, and vice-versa. In this emerging paradigm shift—also referred to as Industry 4.0—companies must enhance their integrative capabilities and facilitate knowledge sharing between product engineering and production to sustain competitive advantage. This paper discusses organizational capabilities and tools required to enable transformation into Industry 4.0. Literature on Integrated Product and Process Development (IPPD), Concurrent Engineering (CE) and Lean has been studied. This state-of-the-art is seen in connection with efforts made in a research project with the goal to increase competitive advantage by leveraging capabilities in automated manufacturing of large and complex products—a manufacturing context that is regarded as difficult to automate in an economical way. The results show that investing in the latest manufacturing technology alone will not provide the capabilities required. It is also necessary to invest in people skills, knowledge and organizational learning. Process design and design-for-automation must be considered already from the conceptual product design to avoid expensive re-designs and design loops. The use of physical and virtual demonstrators proved to facilitate an efficient and effective design process.