Lean Product Development: Fact Finding Research in Italy

Companies have to constantly innovate and introduce new products to the market to win the current pressure they are facing in the globalization era. New Product Development (NPD) Process is becoming crucial, and its performances determine the success of the whole enterprise. Most efforts have been dedicated to improve the phase using different tools and methodologies. Particularly some are trying to apply lean product development to foster the efficiency and effectiveness of their NPD. Though literatures show its success, its implementation is complex and ask for relevant efforts to get benefits out of it. The contribution of this work is to understand if the application of Lean in NPD is currently diffused in Italy. In order to do this we analyzed the development phases of eleven SME and large Italian companies working in mechanical and electronics sector. As a methodology a direct interview has been conducted using semi-structured questioner consists of 39 questions divided into 5 sections. The first section was about lean product development process, the second section was about lean product design, the third section was about knowledge based engineering, and fourth was about cost estimation and the last part consists of additional question about the challenges to implement lean in product development. The interview personnel were project managers, product designers and technical directors. From the study it is found out that most of the companies seldom integrate lean thinking in their product development. Moreover, the early involvement of suppliers in NPD is low, rather the traditional concurrent engineering practice is seen to be adopted by many of the companies interviewed by integrating for example manufacturing starting from concept phase to launch phase. However, the study is a fact finding research, and it is neither intended to be exhaustive nor to be accurate to draw complete conclusions about lean adoption in Italian manufacturing industries.