Accelerating Product Development

Leveraging Flow & Lean Development Principles for Speed to Market

May 18-19, 2020

COURSE DESCRIPTION

In today's highly competitive environment, companies are faced with short product life cycles, frequent introduction of new products and services in existing and new markets, driving growth through expanding product portfolios, responding to competitive threats of disruptive technologies and products, and doing it all with shorter and shorter deadlines. Accelerating Product Development is a highly interactive two-day workshop that teaches the foundational principles for managing product & service development processes for short development cycles in time-competitive environments. Furthermore, it informs on skills needed to change your development processes for achieving the holy grails of agility and speed to market for competitive success.

We place emphasis on understanding the role of flow principles in guiding managerial thinking and decision making for development processes. We provide a comprehensive framework that integrates well-tested methods and practices in effectively managing risk and using resources effectively for speed-to-market driven product development. Our framework is broader than, but fully explains and capitalizes on, lean product development principles and practices. It is widely used by all size companies from start-ups to Fortune 1000 companies, from manufacturing, to health care, to financial services. Our interactive and highly-engaging approach utilizes experiential simulations and real-life case discussions, and will allow you to develop a custom blueprint for revolutionizing product development for your firm. At the same time, you will develop the needed understanding and skills to lead development teams and related project efforts.

TOPICS COVERED IN THIS COURSE

The economics of accelerated, speed-to-market driven product development (putting a “price tag” on speed to market)
Impact of globalization and technology on the product development funnel
Dealing with the fuzzy front end and customer engaging processes
Work-flow principles applied to product development processes
Effective lean product development practices
Metrics for flow-based development
Power and pitfalls of incremental innovation
Effective experimentation, planning, and pivoting
Fast feedback and effective ways for development system design
Preventing overloads and effective project loading
Managing development risks proactively
Top management product development leadership
Organizing for short cycle development

BENEFITS

This course will teach participants how to:

Design and manage product development processes for growth and competitive success
Develop a thinking framework and offer tools for time-competitive product development
Apply flow and lean principles for effective and short development cycle processes
Design, motivate, and drive learning in cross-functional development teams
Lead (rather than micromanage) product development for competitive success
Drive needed change and institute practices to manage risks and use resources effectively for accelerated product development

WHO SHOULD ATTEND?

Senior and mid-level executives, managers, and professionals with a few years of development experience across functional areas with interface to product/service/business model development and strategic innovation; aspiring entrepreneurs; technology leaders, managers and owners of startup businesses. We encourage that cross-functional teams from companies or start-ups that represent marketing, engineering, and manufacturing attend the workshop at the same time.

INSTRUCTOR

Panos Kouvelis
Emerson Distinguished Professor of Operations & Manufacturing Management and Director of The Boeing Center for Supply Chain Innovation at Washington University’s Olin Business School