Synopses & Reviews
Like many celebrated companies, Harley-Davidson has soared, faltered, nearly died, and come back to life as a robust, iconic institution. And like all enduring companies, it learned that the constant push to improve and innovate is essential for staying on top—and even for staying in existence.
The Lean Machine is an intriguing, behind-the-scenes account of Harley-Davidson’s remarkable post-bankruptcy growth period, spurred largely by radical improvements to its product development processes. As director of product development, author Dantar Oosterwal was instrumental in applying lean principles to the realm of product development (principles made famous by Toyota’s vaunted production system). The result was the highly efficient and effective “Knowledge-Based Product Development”—a revolutionary system that reduced development time by half, and quadrupled new product development throughput.
Combining a probing, nuanced examination of the product development process with a sweeping systems approach to understanding its full scope and impact on an organization, The Lean Machine traces the evolution that the Harley-Davidson product development team underwent as it moved to its breakthrough process of cadence, flows, and set-based designs, stopping along the way to:
• Explore the far-reaching effect of “firefighting,” which funnels huge amounts of time, money, and human resources into fixing last-minute problems.
• Pinpoint the hidden problem of “False Positive Feasibility,” which dooms many projects developed with common phase-gate processes.
• Explain the remarkably practical, low-tech oobeya process for visually documenting targets, objectives, and workflow.
• Uncover the powerful results achieved by building product development on a foundation of planned, experiential learning cycles.
• Make a persuasive case for adopting a “combat planning” approach to product development, which is better suited to turbulent conditions.
Packed with actual data, true stories, and engaging, first-person narrative, The Lean Machine gives you deep insights and reliably effective strategies for using Knowledge-Based Product Development to radically improve your own systems, developing more new products in much less time—and with predictably excellent results.
Dantar P. Oosterwal has led global innovation improvements as vice president of innovation at Sara Lee and as director of product development at Harley-Davidson. Dantar holds a B.S. degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Michigan, and a master’s degree in Management from the Sloan School of Management at MIT. He lives in Batavia, Illinois.
Review
"The Lean Machine serves best as a set of tips for the project manager, but executives can also benefit from Oosterwal's wisdom when they are trying to build a top-performing team of product developers or engineers." --Houston Business Journal
"[Oosterwal] gives business leaders insight on supporting innovation and shows them how their companies can consistently excel at developing innovative and profitable products and still keep employees motivated, energized and always learning." --Biztimes Milwaukee
"The author uses a friendly, conversational approach....The lessons provided are universal and helpful for any company needing a resurgence." --APICS Magazine
Synopsis
Some things never change. Harley-Davidson is still the great, iconic American motorcycle. But like many storied companies, Harley has had to evolve to stay on top, even to stay in existence. From near-extinction in the early eighties, it has risen to worldwide recognition for management excellence and innovation. The Lean Machine is an inside look at how Harley-Davidson was able to adapt in an ever-changing world and accelerate product development. Rooted in Japanese productivity improvement techniques, Knowledge-Based Product Development helped fuel Harley’s incredible period of sustained growth.
Even after the company earned the PDMA Corporate Innovator Award in 2003, Dantar Oosterwal, a Harley-Davidson executive, took the improvement a quantum leap further. By implementing Lean Product Development techniques, Harley realized an unprecedented fourfold increase in throughput in half the time, powering annual growth of more than ten percent.
In The Lean Machine, Oosterwal shows the day-to-day transformation at Harley and identifies universal change and improvement issues, so that companies in any industry can incorporate Knowledge-Based Innovation—with predictably excellent results.
Synopsis
“With a fresh American approach, based on the iconic giant, Harley Davidson, Dantar Oosterwal makes the whole new concept of lean new product design and development clear and doable. If new product design is the last frontier for competitive companies, The Lean Machine is the guidebook you will want to take with you on the journey.”
— Patricia E. Moody, Fortune magazine, “Manufacturing Hero”; and author of The Big Squeeze, Powered by Honda, and The Incredible Payback
From near-extinction in the early eighties, the Harley-Davidson Company has risen to worldwide recognition for management excellence and innovation, and is a standout leader in the realm of product development. Part personal business journal, part big-picture analysis, and part step-by-step toolkit, The Lean Machine examines the groundbreaking application of lean manufacturing principles to product development at Harley-Davidson—a breakthrough that resulted in more products, faster cycles, and better quality, and that powered annual growth of more than 10 percent.
Packed with little-known details about how the company came to reinvent the way it designs new products, and a broad overview of the fertile corporate climate that made it possible, The Lean Machine uncovers the power of Knowledge-Based Product Development to achieve predictable, positive results, without having to continually fix late-breaking problems and full-blown crises. It’s a formula for outstanding success that can be replicated or adapted to fit your own company’s needs.
About the Author
DANTAR P. OOSTERWAL (Batavia, IL) has led global innovation improvements as Vice President of Innovation at Sara Lee, as well as Director of Product Development at Harley-Davidson.
Table of Contents
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introductioni
1 Working Hard
Springtime in Paris
The Concurrent Product Development Process
A Reality Check
Unexpected Competition
Problems Late in the Development Process
2 The Harley-Davidson Environment
Harley-Davidson Was Different
Consensus Decision Making
We Fulfill Dreams
Lessons from the Dark Days
The Circle Organization
Consensus-Driven Organization
Managing Conflict
The Harley-Davidson Business Process
Organizational Learning
3 Harley-Davidson’s Product Development Leadership
Learning Team
The PDL2T Journey
Learning Organizations
4 The PDL2T
Systems Thinking
Learning to See the Product Development System
Learningful Conversations
Creating Shared Vision
5 Firefighting and the Tipping Point
The MIT Connection
Firefighting
The Tipping Point
Past the Tipping Point
Lessons from Beyond the Brink
6 Cadence and Flow, Bins and Swirl
The Outstanding Corporate Innovator
Product Development Flow
Product Development Cadence
The Application of Cadence and Flow
Bins
Heuristic Rules of Thumb
The Innovation Swirl
7 Supply and Demand
The System Dynamics Model of the Motorcycle Business
A Soft Landing by Reducing Shipments
Generating Product Demand
Developing New Products
8 A Left Turn: Implementing Lean Principles in Product
Development
Don’t Bring Lean Manufacturing Upstream
The Roots of Knowledge-Based Product Development
The Systems Approach to Flight
Work Smarter, Not Harder
9 The Product Development Limit Curve
Haste Makes Waste
Bad Systems Beat Good People
Design Rework Loops
Product Development Is Predictable
10 Integration Points and False Positive Feasibility
False Positive Feasibility
Design Cycles and Integration Points
11 Learning Cycles
The Learning Cycle
Set-Based Product Development
12 Set-Based Design
A New Framework for Product Development
The Second Piece of the Limit Curve Puzzle
13 Leadership Learning and Pull Events
The Leadership Learning Change Model
Early Pull Events
Creating Leverage Through Pull Events
14 Quickening Product Development
Railroad Planning versus Combat Planning
Establishing and Using Help Chains
Using Visual Management
15 Oobeya
Collaboration Using the Oobeya Process
The Oobeya Process
The Wall
Quickening the Pace of Innovation
16 Knowledge-Based Product Development
Indications of Success
Creating Change
Notes
Index