Benchmark Report Shows Results from Lean Product Development

The Aberdeen Research Group just published a report benchmarking companies that use Lean Product Development. This report is available to anyone willing to provide some basic information to Aberdeen through an on-line form.

Their research shows that best-in-class companies who use Lean Product Development achieve 25% faster time-to-market, achieve cost targets more frequently than average and claim that they now spend 69% of their time on value-added activities vs. 45% for the average companies.

There are some interesting details in the numbers. For example, 69% of "best-in-class" - at least 20% better than average - and 53% of "laggards" - at least 30% worse than average - use Value Stream Mapping. However, 70% of best-in-class use tools and techniques to support knowledge-based engineering vs. only 30% of the laggards.

Unfortunately, Aberdeen's recommendations do not follow their own data. Based on their results, I would expect to see strong endorsements of knowledge-based engineering, product portfolio management, set-based design and a strong metrics program. Instead, they offer the usual bromides of "reduce waste" and "streamline processes." More dangerously, they recommend reducing variability and validating designs early - both of which run counter to knowledge-based engineering and set-based design.

However, if you need to provide hard data to support your efforts to get Lean Product Development underway in your organization, print out the report for them, highlight the practices that you intend to use on Page 9 and cross out the recommendations on pages 12 - 15.