LeanExSM is a regularly scheduled, facilitated roundtable of product development professionals who benchmark each others’ product development processes and foster continuous improvement in their organizations by learning and applying lean principles.
Value Proposition: LeanExsm provides deep rich learning and skills through personal exchange of knowledge and experience to improve your development process, time to market, and product performance while reducing waste and creating the type of learning-centered environment that is a key to Toyota’s unparalleled success and productivity.
The new strategic imperative of organizations has become learning and knowledge. Knowledge has become a key ingredient in what we do, buy and sell. Knowledge has become this society’s raw material. This raw material is dynamic and ever changing, which demands that the users must also be dynamic and constantly seeking the raw material – knowledge and learning.
Since knowledge and learning are social in there nature, we have created a community to help facilitate our learning – to promote conversation, idea exchange and experimentation.
Benefits
When participating in LeanExsm, you:
- Benchmark - review each others’ product development processes in a confidential setting
- Problem Solve - discuss common problems and their solutions
- Learn - identify opportunities to apply lean principles for improvement
- Grow - exchange management savvy & know-how; avoid others’ mistakes from lessons learned
- Continuity - gain regular access to a consistent, trusted group of non-competitive peers
- Confidentiality - develop a network of outside peers where you can discuss serious topics
- Diversity - gain cross-industry perspectives, ideas, and solutions to address your business problems
- Focus - topics drawn from the needs and interests of members
- Depth - documented, shared knowledge at a depth not available from conferences and professional associations
- Accountability - regular follow-up and support over time on your initiatives and commitments
- Proven Format - based on sound active learning principles and uses approaches that have helped Toyota outpace its competitors by excelling as a learning organization; modeled after existing peer groups with a 4+ year track record
- Thought Leadership – Access to key leaders in Lean NPD and the Toyota development system (TDS/TPDS)
Knowledge networks and communities of practice are collaborative and depend on regular participation and involvement of the members. You commit to confidentiality of member-shared information, embrace regular, consistent involvement, actively share ideas / knowledge / experiences, provide professional peer-to-peer feedback to each other, and collaborate on improvement initiatives and group problem solving. You also determine by group consensus the focus and areas of learning to be addressed.
Our role
LeanExsm is lead by professional facilitators who also are experienced product development professionals. To support and guide the group's learning journey so you can focus on sharing knowledge, we:
- organize and administer the group and network sessions
- establish and maintain the group dynamics and communications
- tailor sessions to the members’ interests and needs
- document group outcomes, learnings, and commitments
- develop body of knowledge forums on topics requested by members, including overview presentations, targeted guest experts, skill building exercises and example tools.
- identify and inform you of emerging product development trends, connecting you to our broad professional network of thought leaders.
Who Should Join
Product development managers and executives who benefit from this type of peer-to-peer learning:
- lead product development
- establish design / development / engineering practices
- want more consistent, in-depth development
- determine new product development approaches and trends
- are not satisfied with 'good enough' and value the insight of others in creating better solutions
- are interested in staying the course, committing to the active participation needed to make real improvement
Format
LeanExsm meets regularly (at least 8 times per year), usually as breakfast meetings in Chicagoland. Sessions generally consist of a group of 6-16 product development professionals and 1-2 facilitators. A typical session includes:
- 7:30 a.m. Networking over continental breakfast
- 8:00 a.m. Hot Topics: Prioritization of needs and issues participants are currently facing
- 8:30 a.m. Lean Product Development Forum Topic Overview
- 9:00 a.m. Topic Discussion: Participants evaluate fit with their experiences and organizations' needs
- 10:00 a.m. Open Space Exchange: Optional Tour of host facilities. Discussion and problem solving of priority issues facing participants with shared management savvy, experience, and know-how
- 10:45 a.m. Wrap-up: Session evaluation (quick survey), Next Session details
- 11:00 a.m. Head out to apply what you've learned in your organization
Testimonials
The interactive nature of LeanExsm provides deep rich learning that engages participants and provides knowledge and tools they can apply directly to their organizations. Read what actual participants have to say.
“Very Relevant. Learning, discussing and applying these methods are made much easier with support from the group.” –Dan Kowalik, Bretford
“Awesome meeting! I am looking forward to more.” - John Jacqua, Bretford
“The LeanExsm sessions always energize me and give me actionable ideas that have proven to improve my service product development efforts.” – Lewis Kennebrew, ProductSpace Solutions
- “Consistency, efficiency, value to product development.”– Ken Platz, Shure Inc.
- “Re-build technical capability” – Ken Lucas, International Truck & Engine
- “Innovative service packages leading to savings to customer and high value”– Srini Erramilli, ProductSpace Solutions
- “Show team interrelationships”– JE, MVS Dynalink
- “Dramatically – improve speed to market.” - John Jacqua, Bretford
- “These will improve the ease of doing business with us.” “Improve service delivery”– Lewis Kennebrew, ProductSpace Solutions
- “Streamline definition & clarification of needs”– LeanExsm member
- “Improved efficiency, increased throughput” – LeanExsm guest
- “It would start down a path of Lean in Engineering.” – LeanExsm guest
- “Should eliminate repetitive problems”– LeanExsm guest
- "Bring better focus to strategic decision making in P.D.”– LeanExsm guest
- “More rapid, repeatable product development”– LeanExsm guest
- “Time to market will be reduced.”– Dan Kowalik, Bretford
- “Better view of where we are going. Larger KM development. People development”– Jim Martin, Fluid Management
- “Better focus on resource deployment translating to higher product development efficiency”– LeanExsm guest
- “Provide better flow of development projects”– LeanExsm guest
- “Very relevant. Better value. 1st to Market."– L. Welter
- “Sharing of information.” “Sub-system reviews” – Dan Kowalik, Bretford
- “Capturing knowledge concisely” “Implementing A-3 sheets” – John Jacqua, Bretford
- “Knowledge Briefs for Proposals” “NPD value propositions”– Lewis Kennebrew, ProductSpace Solutions
- “How to use A3’s to communicate VOC to marketing, development, etc.” “Methods of relating to VOC” – LeanExsm member
- “Taking the time out to focus on improvement”– LeanExsm guest
- “Identifying metrics related to NPD”– LeanExsm member
- “Knowledge sharing + retention, peer knowledge exchange, seeing big picture, responsibility based teams.”– LeanExsm guest
- ”The system of eliminating weak alternatives vs. pursuing the BEST.”– LeanExsm guest
- “Tradeoff curves”– LeanExsm guest
- “Building a knowledge ‘database’ (sets of curves, etc.)”– LeanExsm guest
- “Map of key subsystems”– Jim Martin, Fluid Management
- “Basic set-based design principles”– Ken Lucas, International Truck & Engine
- “Starting a knowledge base and reviewing how to use it.”– LeanExsm guest
- “A3 structure. Knowledge sharing & mapping”– John Poplawski, William Frick & Co.
- “Kennedy’s LPD map as a visual aid.”– JE, MVS Dynalink
- "Knowledge based product development. Services engineering with LPD concepts."– Srini Erramilli, ProductSpace Solutions
- “Setting up rigorous set of questions for customer value propositions”– LeanExsm guest
- “The short book via Toyota – respect, simple, visual.” “Design Review – inputs, VOC, lessons learned”– Ken Platz, Shure Inc.
- “VOC. General Value Stream - Moving from back to front. Retrospectives = lessons learned.”– L. Welter
Questions? / Contact us If you are interested in joining or hosting, then contact:
Tricia Sutton: 847-445-2098 or LeanEx@suttonenterprises.com