In the Production Preparation Process (3P) we use the term “moonshine” to refer to process of rapid prototyping and iteration. The team creates concepts and tries them out quickly and cheaply in order to learn more. Today we have some really powerful tools available to do this. One of them is Lego Technic. It is [...]
3P – the Production Preparation Process – is often used to develop a complete “reboot” of a process. The term kaikaku is often applied. Like many of the lean tools, subtle points sometimes get lost in rote application. Here are a couple of thoughts from some experience: Developing and Exploring Target Conditions One of the obvious [...]
In the last post I commented on Ron Popeil’s product development approach – to make the product easy to demonstrate drives making it easy to use, which creates more value for the customer. Let’s take the same thinking back to your internal customers. What if, rather than just writing a procedure, you had to go [...]
I am reading Malcom Gladwell’s somewhat new book What the Dog Saw. It is an anthology of articles he has written for New Yorker magazine over the last few years. The first chapter is about Ron Popeil, the icon of infomercials and “Set it… and Forget it.” Gladwell describes a fascinating product development slant – make the product easy [...]
Today was traveling on behest of a large corporation, so the travel arrangements were made through them. It all went about as routinely as could be expected on the last weekend before Christmas… for me. Unfortunately the guy I am supposed to meet here had flights going through D.C. that were on a collision trajectory [...]
This post on the Fastcompany.com blog shows a clever desktop manufacturing invention. But what really got my attention was the development process that starts at 3:40 in the video. It shows the process of developing it. They may not call it “3P” but, by and large, this is what it looks like. As they develop [...]
One of the displays in the Toyota Museum in Nagoya was an exhibition on “Universal Design.” This exhibition runs through December 2. Rather than trying to interpret and articulate the concepts, I just want to list some of the key words. I think they stand for themselves, and provide a good baseline for evaluating the [...]