Boeing employees have learned, from hard-won experience, innovation at the scale of aerospace requires functional groups to work together.
The concept is simple: bring the product and value-chain stakeholders together in a unified design process where products are developed together with the operations that will produce them. This will provide the flexible knowledge base for innovators to work toward achieving the best alternative outcomes for each respective area; ultimately bypassing costly post-production changes.
Today’s business environment is about receiving more for less. The expectation is that businesses must provide more valuable products and services at lower costs. The idea of “better, faster, safer, cheaper” has dominated business thinking since the early Lean movements of the 1970s.
While Lean methods apply to business optimization, streamlining processes and eliminating waste, Design practice is focused on business transformation and is driven by innovation in all areas of the business. It focuses the lean process on the customers needs, because the most wasteful practice is making something the customer does not need.