Visible Knowledge for Flawless Design: The Secret Behind Lean Product Development

✍ Scribed by Allen C Ward; Dantar P Oosterwal; Durward K Sobek II

• Publisher: Productivity Press
• Year: 2018
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 116
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

Visible knowledge is a tool nearly lost in the West, but it has been used to great effect by Toyota in its 50-year march from noncompetitiveness to its current status as the second largest automobile company in the world. It is key for the 50% growth in market share Toyota plans for this decade despite worldwide overcapacity in the auto business. This book presents the reader with a systematic approach to create, capture, and display knowledge in a way that allows development teams to optimize the design of their products and production processes. Visible knowledge not only applies to knowledge management, but provides a means of collaboration to facilitate better decision-making in the development process.

This book has evolved out of a manuscript that Allen Ward, the foremost U.S. expert on lean product development, was writing at the time of his untimely death. It is not intended to be a treatise of Lean product development methods. Quite the opposite--it is focused on one small piece, ''visible knowledge.'' It is, however, one technique that Dantar Oosterwal and Durward Sobek have found to be very effective at Harley-Davidson and other places, and a tool that can make a difference whether used by itself or as a starting point for a larger journey into Lean product development.

In completing this work, Oosterwal and Sobek kept the aim true to Allen's original intent. The preface and first three chapters are essentially Allen's original intellectual contribution. They have made editorial changes to improve readability and clarity of explanation. Throughout, they have attempted to preserve Allen's voice in the writing, even keeping the narrative in first person as it was originally written. They have also added a fourth chapter that highlights some practical ways to apply the ideas presented in earlier chapters, illustrated with case examples from their experience.

✦ Table of Contents

Content: Cover
Half Title Page
Title Page
Copyright Page
Contents
Foreword: How This Book Came to Be
Preface: What You'll Learn
Acknowledgments
About the Authors
Chapter 1: How and Why to Use Visible Knowledge
What Is Visible Knowledge?
The Basic Concept
How Visible Knowledge Changes the Development Process
The Wright Brothers, "Understand Then Design," and the P-51
The Efficiency of Visible Knowledge
The Problem
Overcoming the Objections
Reference
Chapter 2: How to Create Visible Knowledge
Choosing the Issues to Investigate
How We'll Approach the Problem
Step 1: State the Issue. Step 2: Draw a PictureStep 3: Create a Causal Diagram
Substep A
Substep B
Substep C
Substep D
Substep E
Step 4: Finding Data and Creating Curves
Substep A
Substep B
Substep C
Substep D
Step 5: Countermeasures
Chapter 3: Visible Knowledge and Companies
Organizing Your Knowledge
Changing Management Roles and Skills
Making Sure Your People Create Visible Knowledge
Conducting Effective Design Reviews
Changing Your Development Process
Changing the Research Organization
Changing Supplier Relationships
Changing the Test Organization
Conclusion: Better, Faster, Cheaper. Chapter 4: Applying Visible KnowledgeEstablish a Visible Knowledge Mindset
Summary
Alternative Ways of Building Visible Knowledge
Leveraging Existing Data
Tapping the Experience of Seasoned Employees
Using Designed Experiments
Use Visible Knowledge to Enhance Cross-Functional Collaboration
Presentation Is Important
Leading the Change
The Journey Is Just Begun
Index.