Whittier Consulting Group, Inc.
P.O. Box 859
Camas, WA. 98607
206-274-6179

Design Blitzes and Rapid Prototyping
Turbo Charges Product Development

Situation:

A medical devices company found that product development took too long, and that they got customer feedback too late in the process. As a result, they were only capable of delivering three products per year in a market that needed many more new products.

Actions:

They began conducting Design Blitzes - focused design events with cross-functional teams to develop and evaluate multiple solutions to a technical or customer challenge within just a few days. They supplemented this with strategic use of Rapid Prototyping equipment to build their internal capacity to conduct experiments and evaluate concepts.

Results:

After two years, the company could deliver as many as 15 new products per year, and they have begun to use this capacity to leverage their technology into new markets.

Knowledge Brief of the Week

Each week, I publish a new Knowledge Brief to the Lean Product Development Resource Center. Here are the next three topics

February 10:
Lean Product Development for Advanced R & D:
Steps Towards the Fully-Realized Lean Product Development Organization

February 17:
Lean Leaders Have Their Own Problems to Solve:
Middle Managers in the Lean Product Development Organization

February 24:
Process Flow Variants:
Value Stream Maps Aren't The Only Game in Town

Ready for More?

Katherine Radeka helps you get your ideas to market faster. When you are ready to get serious about putting lean product development into practice to help you shorten time to market, increase R & D capacity or lower costs, she is ready to help.

She knows how to tailor lean product development to meet the needs of companies ranging from the Fortune 100 to family firms earning $10 - $50 million per year, in a wide variety of industries.

Her clients say that she is tough where it counts, but easy to work with and deeply knowledgeable.