Application of Lean Tools in New Product Development: A Case Study from Precision Metrology Manufacturing

New Product Development (NPD) constitutes a vital part of every business’ strategy to stay ahead of competition, hence companies need to develop standard procedures to incorporate Lean in NPD. Though quite a few firms strive to apply Lean in their NPD processes, they fail to understand how to obtain results par excellence. This knowledge gap could be attributed to the low volume of published works related to Lean NPD. The main objective of this research is to look at the application of Lean tools implementation in various phases of an NPD process in a meteorology instrument manufacturing company and the significant improvements of crucial Key Performance Indicators were analyzed and discussed in detail. Based on the analysis, the study proposes a practical Lean framework for businesses to use. The chapter discusses the lessons learned and the implications for engineering production managers based on the case study. The findings of this study show the impact of implementation of lean tool to improve the business performance.