TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter 2 discussed the concept of flow and its relationship to lean principles in terms of eliminating idle time and waste. Manufacturing facilitates flow by creating cells in which the product moves in a single-piece fashion from station to station. However, product development, as previously stated, deals with information, not parts. Consequently, the challenge in establishing flow in the product development arena deals with the movement of information from workstation to workstation.
Referring to the house of product development, implementation of a resource and workload management process (discussed in Chapter 6) is a foundational element in terms of process improvement, and a key initial step in establishing flow within product development. The workload management process initiates activity that strives to match work demand to capacity and manage work-in-progress (WIP), thereby minimizing the negative impacts of unplanned work, bottlenecks, multitasking, and expediting. However, to facilitate the establishment of flow within any process, it is necessary to introduce some additional lean concepts, specifically, concepts related to takt time and standard work:
Takt time is defined as the available work time divided by the rate of customer demand. In other words, it represents the pace of a process that is matched to the demand of the customer. Takt time can be calculated using the following formula:
For example, let's say customer demand is 200 units per day and the factory operates at 8 hours (480 minutes) per day. Therefore, takt time would be 2.4 minutes (480 minutes/200 units...
