1st Edition

Lean-Driven Innovation Powering Product Development at The Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company

By Norbert Majerus Copyright 2016
    493 Pages 54 B/W Illustrations
    by Productivity Press

    496 Pages
    by Productivity Press

    In 2005, Goodyear’s research and development (R&D) engine was not performing up to its full potential. The R&D organization developed high-quality tires, but the projects were not always successful. Goodyear embarked on a major initiative to transform its innovation creation processes by learning, understanding, and applying lean product development principles. Within five years, Goodyear saw its product development cycle times slashed by 70 percent, on-time delivery performance rise close to 100 percent, and throughput improve three-fold – all achieved with no increase in the R&D budget.

    Lean-Driven Innovation: Powering Product Development at The Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company describes in great detail how the Goodyear team was able to achieve such significant improvements. Revealing the ups and downs of this successful transformation, the book shares experiences of how this seismic change was managed, how people were engaged, and how Goodyear dramatically reinvigorated its product development and innovation processes—and, in the process, delivered substantial more value to customers and to the company.

    The book also explains how lean product development helped Goodyear dramatically improve revenue by having every new product available when the market needed it. Presenting wide-ranging perspectives from all levels of leadership, this book is ideal for anyone in R&D daring to take on a lean initiative in R&D or who is struggling with a lean transformation that is not delivering to its full potential. Since the book focuses on universal lean principles, it is as insightful to other manufacturing and nonmanufacturing disciplines in any industry as well.

    The book presents invaluable insights gained by the author during his 36 years within Goodyear, of which 10 have been directly involved in trying to develop, implement, and sustain lean to achieve the company’s business objectives. It distills ideas, practices, failures, and successes into key principles that lean product development practitioners can easily implement.

    After reading this book, you will gain a practical path for applying lean to the innovation processes of your organization, including where to begin and what to do, regardless of the industry and the status of your transformation.

    Watch Norbert Majerus discuss Lean-Driven Innovation at: https://youtu.be/yIlJEMJIcyA

    Goodyear Today: Lean Product Development
    Goodyear Results from Lean Product Development
    Lean R&D Helps Develop Profitable Value Streams
    This Lean "Stuff" Really Works
    Goodyear’s Brief History of Lean Product Development
    Lean Is a Lot of Work
    Lean Principles
    Notes

    Success to Survival to a Foundation for Lean
    The Golden Age of Tire Technology
    Early Building Blocks for Lean
    Use of Product and Process Standards
    Knowledge Management Office
    New Business Objectives
    Note

    The Beginning of a Lean Process
    The First Kaikaku—Eroding Profits at Goodyear
    Change Management
    Changes for the Worse
    Policemen, Ambulances, and the Downward Spiral
    Outside Help Does not Help Out Enough
    Matrix and Project Management
    Lean Firsts at Goodyear
    Notes

    Finding and Removing Waste from Product Development
    Focus on the Customer
    What Do Customers Value?
    Value and Waste
    Muda, Muri, and Mura
    Waste Removal Gets Underway at Goodyear
    Notes

    Making New-Product Value Flow
    Break Down Large Projects into Quick Learning Cycles
    Early Attempts at Visual Planning
    Finding Our Bottleneck—Herbie Meets Herbie
    The Kaikaku We Needed
    Exploring Pull and Flow Concepts
    The Turning Point
    Fast is Better than Slow
    Create a Kaikaku
    Pit Crew Tries to Accelerate Speed
    Notes

    Lean and Innovation
    Dispelling Lean Innovation Myths
    Discovery of Lean Tools in the Innovation Creation Process
    It Takes More than One Process
    Create Capacity and Resources for Innovation
    Funding the Innovation Space
    Innovation Talent and Serial Innovators
    Add Room for Failure to the Innovation Space
    Standardizing Innovation
    Managing Incoming Work
    Manage Work Entering the Product Creation Process
    Cost of Delay (COD)
    Goodyear COD Calculation
    Creating Customer Value and Profits
    Lean Innovation Killers
    More Innovation than Ever Before
    Goodyear Innovation Awards
    Notes

    Operating the Lean Product Development Factory
    From Lean Initiative to Lean Function
    Get the Process Right and Results Will Follow
    Lean Support—Accounting for Value
    Responsibility for Quality
    The End of the Herbie Story—Managing Purpose, Process, and People
    Lean Purpose
    Lean Process
    Lean People
    Improve R&D Efficiency—It Is OK to be Selfish
    Lean Expectations and Endurance
    Notes

    Lean Never Ends
    Lean Courage
    Get Started
    Notes

    Index

    Biography

    Norbert Majerus

    "Lean-Driven Innovation illustrates that the application of lean principles and practices entails more than simple cut and paste implementation of factory-floor practices to the complex knowledge work of engineering and innovation. Lean thinking applied to product and process development shares the basic principles of lean operations but goes about actualizing them in very different ways. In sharing the compelling story of applying lean principles to R&D processes in the large, global, complex enterprise that is Goodyear, Norbert Majerus offers a path for improving innovation processes that readers will find practical and applicable regardless of their business type or company size."
    —John Shook, Chairman and CEO, Lean Enterprise Institute

    "Lean-Driven Innovation provides a set of guiding principles for how to build an innovative organization that are based on science and hard-won experience. The principles are brought to life by great examples from Goodyear’s impressive lean transformation in R&D. This is a must-read for innovation leaders. Although based on a transformation in R&D, the thinking applies equally well to software development and other project-based knowledge work."
    —Peter T. Ward, Director, Center for Operational Excellence, The Ohio State University

    "A candid and well-told story of the process by which a strong and innovative engineering culture incorporated the powerful principles of lean product development."
    —Don Reinertsen, Author of The Principles of Product Development Flow

    "Norbert’s work is a particularly impactful effort as it is not purely academic or theoretical, but rather based and vetted upon the years of hard-fought experiences and knowledge gained at Goodyear throughout its lean product development journey. Readers will undoubtedly gain insights into a number of promising continual improvement processes that may be applied at their companies for immediate and positive impact."
    —Rich Gildersleeve, Chief Technology Officer, DJO LLC

    "In Lean-Driven Innovation, Norbert Majerus brings insight and understanding to how Goodyear successfully applied lean principles to its R&D processes, and he offers readers the know-how and encouragement to do the same. The book is especially effective at showing how Goodyear has been able to make its R&D capacity visible and manageable, repetitively surfacing and resolving constraint issues and regularly improving the innovation process. These principles will help non-manufacturing processes far beyond R&D as well, such as administration, services, and healthcare."
    —Peg Pennington, Executive Director, Center for Operational Excellence, The Ohio State University

    "Norbert Majerus is a remarkable engineer and an extraordinary storyteller. This book tells the story of how he and his colleagues have taken their understanding of the basics of lean and applied it to the difficult task of product development. He is one of the few people I know who has so completely absorbed the concepts of the book, Factory Physics, that he has been able to apply them in a completely new environment—product innovation."
    —Mark L. Spearman, Co-author of Factory Physics and Former Department Head, Industrial and Systems Engineering, Texas A&M University

    "When I first got to know Norbert Majerus at an LPPDE conference some years ago, I felt he was a remarkable man. He was sure of his deep knowledge, but he also was very interested in learning more, a lot more. This is a sign of a true lean practitioner. In Lean-Driven Innovation, Norbert shares some of his deep knowledge with us, and puts it in place with clear principles and real examples. He shows that focusing on true customer value — instead of the traditional focus on R&D cost — really pays off, and that building new value streams is the true objective for a product development organization. I love the last chapter Lean Never Ends, showing that the journey has just begun!"
    —Peter Palmer, Senior Manager Process Support, Scania, and Board Member of LPPDE