When most teams talk “lean,” they’re picturing factory floors: kaizens, takt time, waste walks. Useful, yes. But the biggest cost, quality, and schedule levers sit upstream, before tooling is ordered or a line ever spins up. That’s where Lean Design® makes its impact — at the concept stage.
Here, engineers can design out variation, eliminate unnecessary parts, and remove cost before it ever reaches the bill of materials. In practice, this proactive focus defines Munro’s approach, developed in the late 1980s and early 1990s and grounded in Deming’s principle that reducing variation improves quality.
If you want a simpler, lighter, lower-cost product, you get the design right first.
What Lean Design® Is (and Isn’t)
Lean Design® is not a rebrand of TPS, Six Sigma, or classic DFA/DFM. Manufacturing-floor lean tools fight scrap and rework after the fact; Lean Design® attacks the product itself. It maps every part, process, and dollar — from labor minutes to machine time and tooling — and then simplifies the design so that downstream waste never appears.
Munro formalizes this with a set of core elements taught in its NPD training: the Part Value Challenge, S.W.A.T., Design for B.O.B. (buildable by a “Blind, One-arm behind-the-back Builder”), the Munro Scoring System, and the 10 Good Design Principles — anchored by the credo that “the first design is never the simplest.”
The NPD Roadmap: Turning Ideas Into Defendable Business Cases
Munro’s New Product Development (NPD) Roadmap brings design, quality, finance, supply chain, and manufacturing teams together under one clear objective: deliver fast, right-first-time designs that meet “should-cost” targets. To begin with, competitive benchmarking and Design Profit® analysis turn opinion into evidence. In the process, each study measures performance, exposes waste, and tracks where money truly goes. Teams then replace assumptions with clear, data-backed decisions — a shift that drives smarter design and stronger business outcomes.
Consequently, teams gain a ranked portfolio of Level 1, 2, and 3 design concepts. These range from quick wins to stretch tech-transfer opportunities, each tied to cost, weight, quality, and timing impacts. With this framework in place, decision-makers can move confidently from ideas to implementation, aligning engineering priorities with business outcomes.
Costing Intelligence Built In
Because Lean Design® treats cost as a design parameter, Munro’s work bakes in costing at every step. Using directional, technical, and exclusion costing modes — and decades of benchmarks — Munro has a long track record of delivering costing accuracy within ±3%, so choices aren’t hand-wavy — they’re financially hardened.
Proof in the P&L: Cross-Industry Results
Over $100 billion in client savings. More than a billion manufacturing hours cut. Those numbers are the outcomes of Lean Design® in action.
- Automotive: From EV pioneers to legacy OEMs, Munro’s Lean Design® helped teams consolidate parts, improve manufacturability, and eliminate complexity.
• Aerospace: Weight reduction and assembly simplification while improving reliability.
• Electronics: 15% cost reductions in high-complexity systems.
• Industrial Equipment: Factory-level redesigns that remove waste before launch.
• Medical: Smarter design leads to products that exceed profitability and quality goals.
How Lean Design® Turns Complexity Into Competitive Distance
- Simplify to multiply – Every part removed is an operation saved.
2. Make “cost” visible early – Quantified cost mapping transforms tradeoffs into decisions.
3. Tech transfer as design superpower – Lessons across industries fuel breakthrough ideas.
4. De-risk with The Wall Process® – Early issue visibility means faster launches and fewer changes.
Why It Started at Munro (and Why It Still Works)
Lean Design® was forged by Sandy Munro’s evolution from tool-and-die to Ford engineering and finance, where he systematized DFA, helped originate DFM, and saw firsthand how design decisions ripple into cost and quality. Influenced by Deming, Munro codified principles that attack variation at the concept stage and founded Munro & Associates in 1989 to scale that impact across industries. Today, the same philosophy underpins EV breakthroughs, advanced aerospace programs, and high-mix industrial redesigns.
What You’ll Feel When You Run It
- Fewer parts, fewer problems – Expect double-digit parts elimination and assembly simplification.
• A clearer path to profit – With costing accuracy and real metrics, prioritization becomes fast and precise.
• Faster “first right” launches – The NPD Success Loop compresses development timelines.
Get More With Munro
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