Product Review

As understanding of lean and its application to the entire enterprise has deepened, organizations find that they need resources to help them perform core business tasks in new, more effective ways. One of the most critical of these tasks is new product development. The Lean Enterprise Institute is honored to publish Lean Product and Process Development, by Allen Ward, one of the pioneers in the study and practice of lean product development. In this breakthrough text, Ward asks basic questions that drive at the fundamentals of product development, and observes the sources (a.k.a. wastes) of the most common maladies that plague many product development organizations. He distills what might be termed cornerstones from the practices of lean product developers, which differ remarkably from conventional practice. Ward uniquely melds observations of effective teamwork from his military background, engineering fundamentals from his education and personal experience, design methodology from his research, and theories about management, cognition, and learning from his understanding of history and interactions with clients. With Lean Product and Process Development, Ward carries the implications of his theories into specific, practical recommendations, and employs systems thinking in all aspects of thought and investigation.