initiatives and status of projects and functional areas. To ensure
that issues were identified and resolved, each System/Department
prioritized its issues each week. The top two issues were given to
the Project rooms for resolution and the top two issues from the
Projects flowed to the Leadership board. This process forced “clear
problem definition which made it more feasible to address.” 7
Harley-Davidson has successfully changed its product develop-ment process as evidenced by its dramatic increase in new product
throughput. “Knowledge-based development and the application
of the principles is built upon the work of others. The creation of
reuseable knowledge comes from the Wright brothers, lean prin-ciples from Henry Ford and Taiichi Ono, development cadence
from Thomas Edison, learning cycles from John Dewey, and
Plan-Do-Check-Act from W. Edwards, Deming. These principles
are the beginning rather than the end of improving the product
development journey.” 8
More New Releases
Simplifying Innovation: Doubling Speed to Market and New
Product Profits—With Your Existing Resources
By Michael A. Dalton (Flywheel Effect Publishing, 2010)
Inspired by Eli Goldratt’s groundbreaking book The Goal,
Simplifying Innovation describes the first-ever approach to new
product growth based on the Theory of Constraints. Using a busi-ness novel format, the book presents a straightforward, five-step
approach for identifying the bottleneck in a new product process,
uncovering the core issues that constrain it and engaging the
product development team to drive improvements in new product
development speed and impact.
Robustness Development and Reliability Growth: Value Adding
Strategies for New Products and Processes
By John P. King and William S. Jewett (Prentice Hall, April 2010)
This book integrates key tools and processes into a com-prehensive program for developing more robust and reliable
technology-based products. Drawing on their extensive product
development experience, the authors present a complete process
for ensuring product performance throughout the entire lifecycle,
from understanding customers’ needs through manufacturing and
post-launch support.
The authors begin by presenting broad insights and high-level
strategies for improving product quality. Next, they demonstrate
how to implement robustness and reliability strategies that comple-ment existing governance and decision processes. A section on
tools and methods shows how to institutionalize best practices and
apply them consistently. Finally, they tie strategies, decisions, and
methods together through a case study project.
If You Build It Will They Come: Three Steps to Test and Validate
Any Market Opportunity
By Rob Adams (Wiley, April 2010)
Why do 65 percent of new products fail? In today’s hyper-competitive market, companies too often misjudge demand. They
either perform too little of the necessary market research, misuse
the data they do collect, or neglect to integrate their research into
product development. Business professor and strategy consultant
Rob Adams shows you how to make sure you hit your target
market before you spend a lot of money. He shows you the fast,
systematic, and proven approach of performing Market Validation
in advance of making a large product investment. Adams cuts
through the fancy terms and expensive market research that gives
lots of data but no real product-oriented information about usage,
pricing, features and competitive forces. In the end you’ll produce
results on your first release of a far more mature product, shipped
in a faster timeframe with features customers will actually use.
The Product Manager’s Toolkit: Methodologies, Processes and
Tasks in High-Tech Product Management
By Gabriel Steinhardt (Springer, April 2010)
Product management is challenging, complex, and often mis-understood. Across the high-tech industry, drastically different
duties and responsibilities are attributed to product management
professionals. Diverse interpretations regarding the role of product
management have only further confused practitioners and stifled
the ability to develop clear and consistent product management
methodologies. The Product Manager’s Toolkit
provides a con-sistent and holistic managerial approach to product management
and presents a practical and comprehensive methodology (tasks,
processes, deliverables, and roles) that covers nearly all aspects
of product management.
The Right Sensory Mix: Targeting Consumer Product Development Scientifically
By Denise Derval (Springer, July 2010)
Why do some people drink black coffee while others stick to
tea? Why do some people prefer a competitor’s products? Why do
we sell less in this country? Many companies fail to acknowledge
and analyze disparities observed among customers and simply
put it down to culture or emotion. New neuroendocrinological
research proves that consumers are rational: They just have a
different biological perception of the same stimulus! Their pref-erences, behavior, and decisions are strongly influenced by the
millions of sensors monitoring their body and brain. People with
more taste buds, for instance, are sensitive to bitterness and more
likely to drink their coffee with sugar or milk or to drink tea. After
reading the book, managers will be able to understand and predict
customers’ behavior and preferences; design the right sensory mix
(color, shape, taste, smell, texture, and sound) for each product;
fine tune their positioning and offering for every local market; and
systematically increase their innovation hit rate.
Endnotes
1. The Lean Machine: How Harley-Davidson Drove Top-Line Growth
and Profitability With Revolutionary Lean Product Development, p. 34
2. p. 42
3. p. 91
4. p. 108
5. p. 111
6. p.165
7. p. 233
8. p. 240
Books for Review
Mail books and/or email review recommendations to both:
Ms. leigh M. Stewart
345 Willow parkway
Buffalo Grove, il 60089
( lmstewart@suttonenterprises.com)
Ms. april W. Klimley
28 Riverside avenue, #6H
Red Bank, NJ 07701
( Visionsed@pdma.org)
