NOVEMBER 2022AUTOTECHOUTLOOK.COM8IN MY OPINIONLEAN DEVELOPMENT AT MCLAREN AUTOMOTIVEBy Luciano De Oto, Body Engineering Director, McLaren Automotive LtdLean development has a long history in the automotive environment starting from the early 1940s when Toyota introduced a management philosophy derived largely from the Toyota Production System (TPS). The term "Lean" was introduced in the 1990s and was first used to describe Japanese automobile manufacturing. Since then, Lean has become synonymous with efficient manufacturing throughout the world. It is worth noting that Lean is not just related to manufacturing; it can be applied to all other areas of a modern company, following several principles that are the backbone of this philosophy. Product development is one of the areas where Lean principles can be applied, as within this function sits the responsibility for designing new products that meet the end customer's expectations. This can be a complex and risky environment, where development could be potentially disengaged from the delivery of value if the company does not follow Lean principles. There are multiple Lean principles that can be summarised by Value, Value Stream, Flow, Pull, and Perfection. What do these terms mean? They identify several workstreams that the company needed to achieve a Lean development process. The Value workstream aims to understand what the ultimate customer expects from McLaren products and how to position them. It is important in this preliminary phase to understand how much the customer is prepared to pay for this product. Organizations can sometimes lose product and customer focus through internal metrics and initiatives. Product marketing, product development, and finance work together to define the specific value of the product and the market positioning; this is the first step in Lean principle application. Value definition might lead to a confirmation or a change of the existing product, or it might result in reinventing the product entirely to meet customer needs. At the beginning of this phase, Product Development identifies critical knowledge gaps, a practice known as "Learning First." Teams are identifying knowledge gaps that help the rest of the organization determine the technology that will be used, providing insights on consumer interaction and key risks in the proposition and business case. Once the value is specified, the next step in lean development is to define a Value Stream map. This is about defining activities, processes, and workstreams that have the tasks to transform the whole set of targets and requests identified in the value analysis phase into outputs by minimizing `waste.' Lean often refers to waste in relation to inefficient or unclear processes (unnecessary code or functionality; starting more than can be completed; delay in the software development process; unclear or constantly changing requirements; bureaucracy; slow or ineffective communication; partially completed work; task switching; undisciplined communication).During Lean analysis, all actions can be clustered into three main categories, namely ones creating value for the customer (Product Development, Marketing, and more), actions that are necessary from the system but do not create value for the customer (staff activities, Purchasing, Finance, HR, etc.) and actions that are not required by the system and identified as `waste' to be eliminated. At McLaren, we adopted Lean principles to shorten development times and underpin Product Development, relying on a robust plan and process flow optimization. Our ability to work in this first phase of Lean allowed us to kick off series tooling from first prototypes, reducing validation costs and reducing development time. We also focused on strong DFMEA in that phase, as well as the implementation of simulation tools, in order to enable a low margin of error in future workstreams. In that regard, thanks to the application of Lean principles and Luciano De Oto
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