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Uncertainty in the early development of digital business startups can benefit from data-driven testing of hypotheses. Startups face uncertainty not only in product development, but also over the structure of the business model and the nature of the customer or market to address. The authors conceptualize a new model, the Lean Discovery Process (LDP), which focuses on market-based testing from the early business idea through to fully realized product stages of an innovation. The purpose of this paper is to highlight a methodology to help digital business reduce uncertainty and apply lean principles as early as possible in the development of a business concept.

Examining literature in lean startups, lean user experience and lean software development, the authors highlight underlying assumptions of existing lean models. The authors then examine the LDP using the case of raiserve, a social entrepreneurship startup that focuses on the management of cause-based voluntary service.

Existing literature focuses on product development against an assumed customer base. Early hypothesis testing can be applied to business concept development to substantially reduce cost and time to market.

Further investigation of different forms of uncertainty in digital startups can open up opportunities to further apply lean methodologies. A more extensive empirical study to measure the potential impact is warranted.

The authors conceptualize the minimum viable customer and support early testing with concepts from market research and collective intelligence. The authors demonstrate early opportunities to apply lean principles and rigorous hypothesis testing in an LDP that results in significant reductions in time and expense of product development.

The purpose of this paper is to gain insights about the applicability of Lean principles in software industry along with the Lean implementation issues.

Exploratory case studies have been carried out in five software companies. Data were collected by observation and semi-structured interviews with project managers. In this paper, case organizations are categorized as product vs project software development (SD) organization.

It is found that although Lean principles are being adopted in SD projects, application of all Lean principles is not visible. This research reveals that value and flow are more relevant in SD organizations, while value stream, pull and perfection are not conspicuous.

This paper would prove invaluable to lean practitioners and researchers to gain knowledge in lean SD. The paper puts forward the key issues that should be addressed for successful adoption of lean in SD. This study set out to determine the practitioners’ perception of the applicability of lean principles in SD projects. It provides a sound basis for further empirical research on adoption of lean principles in SD organizations.

In this study, the authors assess the current state of lean product development and the lean production shop floor, along with the impact of the former on process quality and the latter on product quality and customer complaint reduction. The interplay between process and product quality and customer complaint reduction is assessed, along with their impacts on business performance.

Data were collected from 377 managers working at auto-component manufacturing firms in India. Confirmatory factor analysis was used for scale validation, and structural equation modelling was employed to test the research hypotheses.

The results of the statistical analyses reveal the positive influence of a lean production shop floor on process quality and lean product development on product quality and customer complaint reduction, and thereby on business performance.

The findings of this research provide insights into the interplay between lean and quality factors and their influence on customer complaint reduction and business performance. Practitioners can use the proposed model to strategically design unique products and improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the production shop floor, which can help enhance the product and process quality. This can reduce customer dissatisfaction and improve the business performance.

Few studies have simultaneously investigated the influence of lean product development and lean production shop floors in the Indian manufacturing context. To the best of our knowledge, this study is one of the first attempts to include customer complaint reduction as a construct in a lean model. It helps identify and prioritise the enablers of business performance and provides valuable insights for practitioners to strengthen lean implementation to attain a competitive edge.

The puropse of this paper is to explore the extent to which principles of lean product development are applied to product design and engineering at automotive companies in South Africa (SA). Survey, interview and observational data form the basis for an adaptation of Toyota’s lean product development system (LPDS) (Morgan and Liker, 2006) to the South African automotive product engineering context.

All seven automotive manufacturers then operating in SA (including Toyota) were investigated, together with sample of those suppliers carrying out product engineering and/or design locally. A questionnaire based on the LPDS, and follow-up interviews were used to ascertain the extent to which lean principles informed product engineering, and identify areas where there was scope for improvement.

The survey established that while SA automotive companies have a strong manufacturing focus there is very limited local product design and development (PD&D), as this tends to be carried out centrally for multinationals. However, global product designs require modifications to suit local conditions and many decisions about manufacturability are taken locally. This broad area of design-related activity will be termed product engineering. The study found considerable scope for increasing the extent to which aspects of product engineering were influenced by lean thinking. An adapted version of the LPDS is proposed to aid lean thinking in product engineering in this context.

This study provides information on the application of lean thinking in product engineering, an area that has attracted far less attention than manufacturing and PD&D. Furthermore it addresses a significant sector of an important emerging economy, and contributes a practitioner perspective to what is predominantly a theoretical literature.

The purpose of this paper is to describe benchmarking to evaluate the product development process (PDP) from a lean perspective.

The work was conducted by means of case studies at large companies in Brazil that develop products, based on a gap in the literature involving a lack of indicators to diagnose how lean are PDPs considering the principles and practices of the lean approach.

The results indicate in a quantitative manner that the 12 companies of the multiple case study are implementing the lean approach in their PDPs in an isolated or systematic manner through the categories – process, management, structure, people, product, client, supplier and waste.

The large companies in the case studies are located in different positions of the supply chain and the year that the company began introducing lean manufacturing was not considered, or the maturity of each firm.

Based on the diagnosis, it was possible to propose a set of actions so that the PDP at each company can be structured in a lean manner, improving competitiveness.

The main contribution of the study is a simple, useful and reproducible method that has a set of measurable indicators and graphic representation identifying the lean product development practices, as well as a structured guide to the implementation of improvements that allow companies from different sectors to be compared at a national level and also in the international market.

Customer value is the key to successful innovation management. This task is considered complex and abstract. For this reason, several models have been proposed to that end, among them, Lean approaches. Lean's background has been applied to value identification, providing many benefits. This paper aims at analyzing the practices employed to identify customer value through Lean approaches.

Through a systematic literature review, the main Lean practices for customer value identification were categorized based on five main streams: (1) customer development, (2) customer value, (3) lean product, (4) lean start-up, and (5) lean innovation. These practices were organized into a framework that addresses value identification based on ideation, value prospection, requirements, construction and measurement, and value delivery.

In total, 33 practices were found to support capturing the value from the customer's perception. Additionally, a discussion is provided on the complementarity and differences between practices.

A framework is proposed to integrate the five streams and the corresponding practices for value identification. The results provide mechanisms that can benefit practitioners to better understand the value demanded by customers during innovation management. In fact, practitioners can use the proposed framework to identify value to customers in a holistic way. Academically, the results gather research on customer value and innovation management to contribute with a novel artifact for customer value identification in operations management using Lean approaches. Finally, a future research agenda on value identification is proposed.

The purpose of this paper is to propose a leagile transformation model for product development that guides manufacturers in the construction of a road map and the management of its deployment in line with both lean and agile improvement objectives.

An intervention qualitative and transformative research approach was adopted in order to develop required knowledge to theorise professional practice made from rigorous observations of facts. The research project took place over a period of two and a half years, in partnership with an international firm that develops and produces a wide range of luxury products.

The application of the methodology proved that a lean transformation does not have to be generated only by the field needs but it can follow a mixed approach where a top-down transformation management linked with strategic objectives is deployed without compromising implication and needs from people on the field. The right balance can be found between the strategic aspect of transformation and the incremental aspect on the field of lean paradigms.

For complete validation and widespread scientific application, the model should be tested in other sectors and industries.

The application case of the leagile model in several divisions of a luxury organisation proved that the proposed approach can be used as a guide for manufacturer in the construction of an improvement road map and in the management of its deployment. The application cases enabled a number of positive results to be generated and measured on quantitative indicators such as service ratio for new products for which, one of the divisions saw an increase of 30 per cent. The approach created a positive revolution among development team members by its potential in terms of communication, steering, benchmarking and knowledge system.

The model supports the identification and prioritisation of improvement initiatives by focusing on the levers for improvement that meet the needs and objectives of transformation, as well as the organisation’s maturity level.

The small Brazilian companies are responsible for a large part of national GDP and formal jobs in the country. This expressiveness is contrasted with the specificities of companies of this size possess, including the need to innovate to survive. Research shows that 83 percent of Brazilian SMEs have launched new products and services, obtaining positive results through this innovative process. This competitive advantage is weighted by a great feature of the small organization: resource constraint. The paper aims to discuss this issue.

Research was carried out in three stages: one qualitative research (by using focal groups) and another two quantitative research works (descriptive and cross-sectional).

The author identified three factors that are important for teenagers when influencing the purchase of the family car: safety, sportiness and comfort. The identification of these factors shows that the millennial generation tends to emphasize aspects of individual interest, such as status and performance, and family context, such as safety and comfort, rather than social aspects, such as the type of fuel and environmental impact.

The authors recommend the development of automobiles that prioritize the three factors mentioned herein in order to reverse the trend of declining car purchase.

The authors presented the relevant attributes in buying decisions of family cars according to teenagers. The authors also indicated which automobile attributes are relevant for a more informed, connected, and with an increasing purchase power generation in contrast with previous generations, whose social context was prior to the emergence of social media.

The purpose of this paper is to introduce a step‐by‐step implementation framework for lean product development (LPD), from the marketing research on product development process, product design to the launch of final production.

The research approach taken in this paper is built around the primary industry cases, practical approaches and partial solutions available within the existing literature.

The most recent improvement of LPD, from the authors' perspective, focuses on tools and implementation for LPD. In this paper, a detailed step‐by‐step implementation is given after the framework is introduced. Led by value and waste analysis in product development, different tools and techniques which can be used to eliminate wastes were discussed briefly, and then the implementation from Doing the Right Thing to Doing the Right Thing for company transition to lean were proposed elaborately.

Due to time and economic environment limitations, the authors have not covered and implemented this approach in all existing different environments to ensure that it is robust.

The approach described here seeks to overcome other frameworks' weaknesses in terms of the realistic aspect and feasibility, and combines more existing best practice from industry, consultancy and academia into a step‐by‐step framework for the achievement of effective LPD.

Many 6‐sigma innovation companies are obtaining ISO9000 series or ISO/TS16949 certifications. However, not many of them have considered the integrated management of ISO/ TS16949 at the time of 6‐sigma introduction. ISO/TS16949 focuses on the process of an overall company. In particular, APQP (Advanced Product Quality Planning) requires that from the beginning all the planning should have a clear quality planning business process. Each company can decide the best course of action to suit its individual needs. Lean DFSS in 6‐sigma offers the concrete development steps of the product development process. And if analyses of Input, Output, Target, Process, KSF, KPI, and FMEA is done in each process and clearly defined in APQP, mutual organic and effective systems can be initially achieved.