Lean Product Development - Redefining the Indian Automotive Product Development Process using Lean Framework

“Building quality into processes” - Eiji Toyoda, Toyota Motor Corporation

The Indian automotive industry has grown at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 14 per cent per annum over the last five years. According to the UNIDO International Yearbook of Industrial Statistics 2008, India features among the top 15 auto-makers. Currently, it ranks 11th in the world in terms of car production and 13th in terms of commercial vehicle production. As India is becoming a hub for global car makers, companies are looking to enhance their component engineering, product design and development capabilities in India to increase their share in the automotive knowledge-based business. So there is an urgent need to infuse new process improvement techniques to the product development cycle, to stay ahead of the global competition.

This paper discusses about the basics of lean principles & wastes, lean product development and mainly discusses about the fundamental framework for applying lean to the product development process for Indian automotive industries. The following building blocks are discussed through lean framework:

1. 1.
   Lean R&D Structure
2. 2.
   Lean Implementation
3. 3.
   Lean Rollout
4. 4.
   Lean Tools & Techniques applied to PD
5. 5.
   Lean Enterprise Model
6. 6.
   Implementation Challenges

We have also given a case study about comparing the seven manufacturing wastes with the product development wastes (Design stage - CAD Modeling and drafting) that mainly occurs in the PD process of Indian automotive companies.