Munro & Associates lives and breathes the Lean Design Methodology®, which was developed by Sandy Munro in the late 1980s and early 1990s, in conjunction with the teachings of Dr. Edward Deming, who continually stated that as variation is reduced, Quality will increase.
Where better to reduce variation than at the concept stage?
Lean Design® began by combining time-tested design strategies for part elimination or combination bolstered with Sandy’s own methodologies based on his experience of what actually works in production and automation. At its core it is all about eliminating waste at the concept design phase and creating a simpler, more elegant product. Now, it’s the dominant methodology for leveling up product designs to be lower weight, more cost-efficient, better quality, and so much more.
Clients who use these services often become new market leaders in a wide variety of industries.
In the ever-developing quest for innovation in a global economy, Munro & Associates introduces the New Product Development (NPD) Roadmap. This groundbreaking system is tailored to help companies achieve rapid product deployment, mitigate quality and producibility risks, and meet “should cost” goals, ensuring they stay ahead of the competition.
The NPD System takes a holistic approach, addressing inefficiencies and bottlenecks at multiple levels. It identifies and eliminates potential manufacturing quality and supply chain issues early in the concept design phase, combining market knowledge, design, manufacturing, and cost expertise.
A diverse and talented customer team led by an Executive stakeholder ensures a streamlined product development process. This team includes personnel from design, engineering, quality, finance, supply chain, marketing, and manufacturing, all working together toward mutual success.
Teams will begin by learning the core fundamentals of Lean Design®: The Part Value Challenge, which parts are up for immediate elimination (S.W.A.T.), how to design for B.O.B., how to create a part manufacturing and assembly map with cost, how the Munro Scoring system works, the 10 Good Design Principle, and most importantly that, “The first design is never the simplest.”
Competitive benchmarking data and analysis reveals the product’s strengths and weaknesses and helps to define the competitive landscape. Munro employs its proprietary Design Profit® software to quantitatively analyze product designs, providing a clear, data-driven understanding of your position in the market.
By front-loading engineering with comprehensive knowledge, the NPD Roadmap ensures that all product goals and functional objectives are met. The Design Profit® software supports design decisions with metrics and business case studies, removing emotion from the equation and replacing it with defendable logic.
Munro’s “Best-of-Best” analysis aggregates the best attributes from competitors, while the “Better-than-Best” study focuses on creating superior product designs by standardizing parts, reducing complexity, and optimizing processes.
Market intelligence is key to creating designs that exceed marketplace demands. Early integration of consumer wants, needs, trends, and brand information ensures products that have bewitching qualities that amaze and delight customers.
Using the baseline Lean Design® map of your current product, the Munro team goes through your design step by step, part by part, and identifies areas where the design can be improved. This ideation process captures ideas that are categorized into 3 Levels: Level 1 – Low hanging fruit, Level 2 – Medium innovation, and Level 3 – Stretch or “bleeding edge” technology improvements.
Low: Consists of ideas that can be implemented almost immediately. The technology is not new and the team members are comfortable that the ideas can be incorporated with minimal testing and validation. Medium: These ideas require further research. The ideas may incorporate a technology utilized by another industry or may incorporate a combination of materials and processes that the teams are unfamiliar with. This may produce patentable ideas, and they are often the most likely to be implemented. Stretch: Ideas that require experimentation, research, and significant testing and validation. These are the ideas on the edge of a paradigm change, are almost always patentable, and have the potential to move your organization to the forefront of its business.
In order to achieve Level 2 and Level 3 designs, Munro introduces your team to design ideas, material concepts, and manufacturing processes outside of what is regularly seen in your industry. Munro has assembled a vast amount of technology, material, and process improvements across practically all industries. We then share our innovation knowledge with your team to help you achieve a new market-leading product.
The Wall Process® is an advanced visual project and risk management tool that ensures the “Product and Process Development Cycle” stays on track. It unites design, engineering, manufacturing, and finance to address root-cause problems early, ensuring the product meets all targets and customer requirements.
By adhering to the NPD Roadmap and utilizing Munro’s tools, companies significantly reduce product development time, increase product quality, and ensure market success. The process is applicable to all products, delivering right-first-time solutions that exceed cost, weight, and performance targets.
Munro’s Lean Design® methodology and the NPD Roadmap offers a comprehensive, structured approach to product development, ensuring that companies can innovate effectively and bring superior products to market swiftly and efficiently. By leveraging cross-functional teamwork, rigorous benchmarking, and advanced risk mitigation techniques, the NPD System provides a clear pathway to achieving market leadership and sustained success.
No, Lean Design® is a completely separate methodology that is applied to the product design at any stage of a product’s life cycle, but preferably in the concept phase.
Unlike Six Sigma, TPS, or other Lean Manufacturing methodologies, which reduce quality issues and wasteful processes on the manufacturing floor, Lean Design® is applied to the product design itself. When implemented properly, Lean Design® creates a simpler, easier-to-produce, and more cost-effective design that removes quality issues before they are ever experienced in the manufacturing process.
The core fundamentals of the Lean Design® Methodology are the “Part Value Challenge,” Eliminating Poor Quality Drivers (S.W.A.T.), Design for B.O.B. (Blind One-arm behind the back, Builder – a robot), Manufacturing and Assembly Cost Mapping, the Munro Scoring System, the 10 Good Design Principle, and most importantly that, “The first design is never the simplest.” These elements are taught in Munro’s Workshop Training “Hearts and Minds.”
No, Munro works with your product design team to map your current design, including cost and quality data, and then analyze it in our proprietary software Design Profit®. Through a series of “Ideation” or brainstorming sessions, the Munro team helps your team create 3 Levels of Design Concepts: Low, Medium, and Stretch. We then help your product design team make business metric-driven choices to create your final product design concept, but the CAD modeling is either done by your team, or we will use one of our partners to complete this step.
Yes, absolutely, if you have control over your product design! Lean Manufacturing and Six Sigma help refine your manufacturing processes and systems, but the true driver of cost and quality issues is inherent in your product design. No matter how much you refine your manufacturing process, you are always limited by your product design. By reducing the amount of parts and simplifying your design, you will eliminate whole manufacturing cells that aren’t needed anymore. Lean Design® has the ability to save your company much more total accounted costs than any Kaizen Blitz.
No, Value Stream Mapping is often done in Visio or similar software to determine the flow of your production process and visualize, analyze, and improve the flow of materials. This includes identifying bottlenecks, inefficiencies, and non-value-added activities and processes, which you can then eliminate to create a system that flows better.
Lean Design® Manufacturing and Assembly Cost Mapping includes mapping every part, process, cost, labor time, machine time, machine cost, application, you name it, and then evaluating your whole product design to see where you can eliminate unnecessary parts and reduce processes by redesigning the product itself, not just the manufacturing process. This is done in our proprietary software Design Profit®, which can be used to track all metrics associated with individual parts, processes, and design changes so that you can make an informed business case for design changes, instantly knowing the ramifications of these choices.
The Lean Design® methodology goes beyond DFA and DFM to include a more rigorous protocol for simplification and tracking real-world metrics and cost throughout the whole process using our software Design Profit®. There is not currently a more effective design methodology in the market.
Probably not. Several consultants have claimed to teach the Lean Design® methodology but were actually teaching their own methods. If you can’t name the seven core elements of Lean Design® and you haven’t trained out of our workbook, then you didn’t receive the Lean Design® training that Sandy Munro and his associates have used to save companies Billions of Dollars. Our training is offered to corporate customers either onsite at Munro & Associates or at your factory/offices.
Contact us here, and we can arrange for someone to reach out and schedule a training for your group. It would be best if you generally had a team of 10 or more, but we are flexible.
We exist to be a North Star for any company that wants to improve their design, technology and production. We live for showing companies how they can reduce costs, speed up production, and create amazing products from scratch. We believe in a never-ending quest for improvement, and that the best companies can stay in business if they commit to creating the highest quality products, while constantly cutting out waste and complexity.
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