Publisher Description

In this insider guide, former Harley-Davidson executive Dantar Oosterwal offers an exclusive look at how Harley-Davidson was able to adapt in an ever-changing world to stay on top and stay in existence.From near-extinction in the early eighties, Harley-Davidson rose to worldwide recognition and is still today one of the great, iconic American motorcycle brands. In this insider guide, former Harley-Davidson executive Dantar Oosterwal offers an exclusive look at how Harley-Davidson was able to adapt in an ever-changing world to stay on top and stay in existenceIn The Lean Machine, you will learn about their secret weapon and go-to formula for outstanding success as well as:the day-to-day transformation at Harley-Davidsontheir adapted Knowledge-Based Product Developmentidentifies universal change and improvement issues so that any company can incorporate thisRooted in Japanese productivity improvement techniques, the Knowledge-Based Product Development method helped Harley realize an unprecedented fourfold increase in throughput in half the time--powering annual growth of more than ten percent.The Lean Machine is part business journal, part analysis, and part step-by-step toolkit that will help companies in all industries achieve predictably excellent results.

Back Cover

"With a fresh American approach, based on the iconic giant, Harley Davidson, Dantar Oosterwal makes the whole new concept of lean new product design and development clear and doable. If new product design is the last frontier for competitive companies, The Lean Machine is the guidebook you will want to take with you on the journey." Patricia E. Moody, Fortune magazine, "Manufacturing Hero"; and author of The Big Squeeze , Powered by Honda , and The Incredible Payback From near-extinction in the early eighties, the Harley-Davidson Company has risen to worldwide recognition for management excellence and innovation, and is a standout leader in the realm of product development. Part personal business journal, part big-picture analysis, and part step-by-step toolkit, The Lean Machine examines the groundbreaking application of lean manufacturing principles to product development at Harley-Davidsona breakthrough that resulted in more products, faster cycles, and better quality, and that powered annual growth of more than 10 percent. Packed with little-known details about how the company came to reinvent the way it designs new products, and a broad overview of the fertile corporate climate that made it possible, The Lean Machine uncovers the power of Knowledge-Based Product Development to achieve predictable, positive results, without having to continually fix late-breaking problems and full-blown crises. It's a formula for outstanding success that can be replicated or adapted to fit your own company's needs.

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Like many celebrated companies, Harley-Davidson has soared, faltered, nearly died, and come back to life as a robust, iconic institution. And like all enduring companies, it learned that the constant push to improve and innovate is essential for staying on topand even for staying in existence. The Lean Machine is an intriguing, behind-the-scenes account of Harley-Davidson's remarkable post-bankruptcy growth period, spurred largely by radical improvements to its product development processes. As director of product development, author Dantar Oosterwal was instrumental in applying lean principles to the realm of product development (principles made famous by Toyota's vaunted production system). The result was the highly efficient and effective "Knowledge-Based Product Development"a revolutionary system that reduced development time by half, and quadrupled new product development throughput. Combining a probing, nuanced examination of the product development process with a sweeping systems approach to understanding its full scope and impact on an organization, The Lean Machine traces the evolution that the Harley-Davidson product development team underwent as it moved to its breakthrough process of cadence, flows, and set-based designs, stopping along the way to: Explore the far-reaching effect of "firefighting," which funnels huge amounts of time, money, and human resources into fixing last-minute problems. Pinpoint the hidden problem of "False Positive Feasibility," which dooms many projects developed with common phase-gate processes. Explain the remarkably practical, low-tech oobeya process for visually documenting targets, objectives, and workflow. Uncover the powerful results achieved by building product development on a foundation of planned, experiential learning cycles. Make a persuasive case for adopting a "combat planning" approach to product development, which is better suited to turbulent conditions. Packed with actual data, true stories, and engaging, first-person narrative, The Lean Machine gives you deep insights and reliably effective strategies for using Knowledge-Based Product Development to radically improve your own systems, developing more new products in much less timeand with predictably excellent results. Dantar P. Oosterwal has led global innovation improvements as vice president of innovation at Sara Lee and as director of product development at Harley-Davidson. Dantar holds a B.S. degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Michigan, and a master's degree in Management from the Sloan School of Management at MIT. He lives in Batavia, Illinois.

Author Biography

DANTAR P. OOSTERWAL has led global innovation improvements as Vice President of Innovation at Sara Lee, as well as Director of Product Development at Harley-Davidson.

Review

..".valuable insights for people interested in understanding how systematic problem solving applies to the kinds of problems that product development managers need to solve..." "-- Journal of Product Innovation Management"
."..valuable insights for people interested in understanding how systematic problem solving applies to the kinds of problems that product development managers need to solve..." "-- Journal of Product Innovation Management"
""The Lean Machine" serves best as a set of tips for the project manager, but executives can also benefit from Oosterwal's wisdom when they are trying to build a top-performing team of product developers or engineers." --"Houston Business Journal"
"[Oosterwal] gives business leaders insight on supporting innovation and shows them how their companies can consistently excel at developing innovative and profitable products and still keep employees motivated, energized and always learning." --"Biztimes Milwaukee"
"The author uses a friendly, conversational approach....The lessons provided are universal and helpful for any company needing a resurgence." --"APICS Magazine"

Long Description

From near-extinction in the early eighties, Harley-Davidson rose to worldwide recognition and is still today one of the great, iconic American motorcycle brands. In this insider guide, former Harley-Davidson executive Dantar Oosterwal offers an exclusive look at how Harley-Davidson was able to adapt in an ever-changing world to stay on top and stay in existence. In The Lean Machine, readers learn about Harley-Davidson's secret weapon and go-to formula for outstanding success: Knowledge-Based Product Development. Rooted in Japanese productivity improvement techniques, this method helped Harley realize an unprecedented fourfold increase in throughput in half the time--powering annual growth of more than ten percent. Winner of the 2017 Shingo Prize for Literature, The Lean Machine--which is part business journal, part analysis, and part step-by-step toolkit--takes readers through the day-to-day transformation at Harley and identifies universal change and improvement issues so that companies in any industry can incorporate this game-changing system--with predictably excellent results.

Review Quote

"...valuable insights for people interested in understanding how systematic problem solving applies to the kinds of problems that product development managers need to solve..." -- Journal of Product Innovation Management

Excerpt from Book

Introduction Learning is not compulsory . . . neither is survival. W. Edwards Deming This book is written with one purpose in mind: it is intended to help you improve the effectiveness and efficiency of your product development system. The objective of this book is to provide you with the insights necessary to develop more new products of higher quality in less time with your existing organization. This is the story of my personal journey of learning and discovery and is intended to encourage you on your improvement journey, or perhaps persuade you to embark. In 2003 Harley-Davidson was awarded the Outstanding Corporate Innovator (OCI) award by the Product Development Management Association (PDMA). The OCI award was won based on conventional phase gate thinking.1 Through the application of lean principles to product development, the same organization reduced their development time by half and quadrupled new product development throughput. This book provides the organizational learning practices and the knowledge-based development principles to enable your organization to achieve similar or better results. This is a true story, not a novel. Some poetic license has been taken in the chronology of events to make the story meaningful to the reader because, as with any good road trip, the learning journey does not necessarily happen in a neat and orderly fashion. Any learning journey has its fair share of wrong turns and dead ends. To convey the message in a readable fashion our experience is abbreviated and presented more linearly than it actually happened. All of the people in the story are real people. In some cases real names have been used to recognize and acknowledge their contribution. In other cases names have been changed to protect identities. All of the information presented in this book is actual data. If the information is discoverable through publicly available sources, then the actual numbers are presented unchanged. However, if the actual numbers are not generally available through public means, then the numbers have been modified to convey the message without providing actual values to maintain confidentiality. Overview The story has three parts: The current state of product development, the learning environment and organizational learning fundamentals, and the principles of knowledge-based product development. The book is structured to first allow you to see product development as an integrated system and recognize that improvement of the system is only achieved through a learning journey, then provide you with means to take the journey for yourself. In Chapter 1 the story begins with the current state of product development, based upon firsthand experience working at a car company I've chosen to call ''Roaring Motors.'' It is the way I was taught to develop products. It is the way almost everyone I know learned to develop products. It is what I see at nearly every company I visit. The current state of product development lays the foundation for frustration, and subsequent motivation to find a way to work smarter rather than harder. Chapters 2 through 7 describe the learning environment that was present at Harley-Davidson and which allowed this journey of discovery. These chapters present principles of organizational learning neces- sary to improve product development. They describe how system dynamics and organizational learning enable continuous improvement in product development. The foundational elements for effective product development necessary to build a knowledge-based development system are also described in these chapters. Chapters 8 through 16 describe the learning and discovery journey in the application of lean principles, which resulted in knowledge-based product development. These chapters describe the principles necessary to make product development effective and the improvement outcome you should expect. The Importance of Product Development Product development is the lifeblood of our companies and it fuels the economy. Product development is the road that innovation travels on the way to market. It is the key which unlocks dreams and the spark which ignites the future. A recent survey by the Product Development Management Association (PDMA) identified that the top performing quartile of companies in their study derive nearly 48 percent of their sales revenue from new products and nearly half of the company's profits from new products (products in the market five years or less).2 As the effective life span of products and services in today's market decreases, it drives the need for shorter product lifecycles. In some cases the development time for new products exceeds the life expectancy of the product in the market. The innovation rate necessary for a company to be successful is rapidly accelerating. The driver for business success is evermore becoming a company's ability to innovate. The Boston Consulting Group (BCG) conducts a global survey of senior business leaders annually to identify the strategic direction of firms. The results reinforce the importance of innovation; recent findings from these surveys indicate that innovation is consistently a top strategic priority. In 2007 the BCG survey polled 2,500 senior executives from fifty-eight countries across all industries and found that 66 percent of the companies identified innovation as one of their top three strategic initiatives. The study also determined that over 50 percent of the senior executives polled believed that their company did not innovate well in spite of this strategic focus. Most of the respondents indicated that their company did not receive the return on investment of innovation they expected. A similar study by the Economist Intelligence Unit sought to understand the connection between innovation and company success.3 In this study, 87 percent of the senior executives polled identified innovation as either important or critically important to the success of their company. The study identified that the beneficial impact of innovation efforts goes far beyond corporate performance and actually drives the national economy. The development of new products and services is increasingly being identified as the engine for growth and prosperity. Former Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez has said, ''Innovation is a driver of our economy.''4 The role that innovation plays in the economy is so important that the United States Commerce Department has made the creation of a universal system of metrics to evaluate the impact of innovation on the economy their top priority. The importance of innovation is echoed in a recent Council on Competitiveness report, which identified that as manufacturing capacity becomes globally available at low cost, the competitive value of manufacturing declines.5 This global competitiveness study emphasizes that innovation is now the primary source of value for United States companies and American workers. The president of the council, Debora Wince- Smith summarized the report by saying, ''The only driver for productivity growth for the U.S. is our innovation capacity.'' The need for innovation to drive economic growth goes well beyond the United States or the primary developed nations. China and India have recognized the importance of innovation and are beginning to break out of their position as members of the underdeveloped world through investment in knowledge creation and innovation. These countries are embracing a culture of new product development by establishing favorable laws and regulations promoting learning and product development. China has recently become the second largest investor in R&D spending, surpassing even Japan. Only the United States continues to outspend the rest of the world as a single nation.6 According to Dirk Pilat, head of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development's (OECD) Science and Technology Policy division, ''The rapid rise of China in both money spent and researchers employed is stunning. To keep up, OECD countries need to make their research and innovation systems more efficient and find new ways to stimulate innovation in today's increasingly competitive global economy.''7 Innovation has become the driver for productivity and growth for every developed nation, as well as for every company that is attempting to grow its business and control its own destiny. Whether country or company, innovation is the differentiator for success. Those who do not innovate will fall behind and will have their fate determined by those who do. This book shares lessons and principles to allow your organization to bring more innovation to market faster with fewer problems through a more effective and efficient product development system. For more information about the principles enunciated in this book, see

Description for Bookstore

Some things never change. Harley-Davidson is still the great, iconic American motorcycle. But like many storied companies, Harley has had to evolve to stay on top, even to stay in existence. From near-extinction in the early eighties, it has risen to worldwide recognition for management excellence and innovation. The Lean Machineis an inside look at how Harley-Davidson was able to adapt in an ever-changing world and accelerate product development. Rooted in Japanese productivity improvement techniques, Knowledge-Based Product Development helped fuel Harley's incredible period of sustained growth. Even after the company earned the PDMA Corporate Innovator Award in 2003, Dantar Oosterwal, a Harley-Davidson executive, took the improvement a quantum leap further. By implementing Lean Product Development techniques, Harley realized an unprecedented fourfold increase in throughput in half the time, powering annual growth of more than ten percent. In The Lean Machine, Oosterwal shows the day-to-day transformation at Harley and identifies universal change and improvement issues, so that companies in any industry can incorporate Knowledge-Based Innovation-with predictably excellent results.

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