Proposal of a method to systematically identify wastes in New Product Development Process

Product developers have to constantly innovate and introduce new products to the market. New Product Development (NPD) Process is becoming crucial, and its performances determine the success of the whole enterprise. Lean thinking has been applied to improve the performances in NPD process through identifying and eliminating non value adding activities (wastes). However there is no formalized and structured method to identify wastes and lead designers to improve the process. This paper tries to develop a method to identify process wastes in NPD and further guide for continuous improvements. The proposed method is based on a well-known and prevalent tool called FMEA (Failure Modes and Effects Analysis). Project managers and designers from eight manufacturing companies operating in Italy have been invited to test the validity in practice and to make it suit to industrial needs. It is found out that the developed method: could effectively be integrated in to existing NPD processes, is quick and easy to use, focuses on the real sources of wastes, helps not only to identify the sources but also measure the severity of wastes, it also effectively addresses the possible ways of eliminating or reducing the sources of wastes, and finally it can be used easily not only by project managers but also designers.