Reading pick: "Lean Product and Process Development"

I have just finished reading ? Lean Product and Process Development ?. Based on the lean methodology, the book explores how lean can be applied to development.

One can find in the book the “lean classics” such as elimination of waste, visual management or teamwork beyond silos. Or also a variant of the fact-based gemba approach, modeled in the book as LAMBDA for “Look, Ask Why, Model, Discuss, Act”.

But there are also some more counter-intuitive (at least for me !) insights such as:

-         Set-Based Concurrent Engineer with the idea of exploring different technical solutions in parallel and keeping tolerances/specifications relatively loose as long as possible. As opposite to design-to-tight-specs focusing on one single technical solution

-         Start project as late as possible versus project & customer milestones, in order to avoid change-of-specs or being disrupted during development by an emerging technologies. As opposite to start the project as soon as possible to be sure to be on time.

I will also take away from this book some tools such as the use of “A3 learning sheets” to crystallize knowledge (as opposite to long and detailed reports), the use of project categories to define cadence.

Finally, a good summary of the book (in the form of a 1-sheet mindmap can be found here: https://www.lean.org/bookstore/Lean_Process_Development_mindmap.pdf

And you, do you have any practical tools to be used for developing a “Lean R&D system”?