Lean Product Development: Nothing New Under the Sun?

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/ijmr.12169
• Date: 01 October 2018
• Published date: 01 October 2018

International Journal of Management Reviews, Vol. 20, 903–933 (2018)

DOI: 10.1111/ijmr.12169

Lean Product Development: Nothing New

Under the Sun?

Eduardo Gomes Salgado and Rob Dekkers 1

Exact Science Institute, Federal University of Alfenas, Alfenas, Minas Gerais State, Brazil, and 1Adam Smith

Business School, University of Glasgow, GlasgowG12 8QQ, UK

Corresponding author e-mail: eduardosalgado@unifal-mg.edu.br

The concept of lean product development has attracted the attention of manyscholars

since its inception in the 1990s derived frompractices at Toyota Motor Company. Key to

this approach to new product development(NPD) are a few methods derived from lean

production as well as longer establishedpractices such as concurrent engineering. This

makes one wonder whether lean product development is a new practice, a new method

or an encapsulation of already existing methods at the time;this quest for the roots and

tenets of lean product development, also in comparison with other methods forNPD, is

the focus of this paper.This journey takes this propositional paper not only to the roots

of lean product developmentand the context of its era of conception, but also to what this

concept adds to other extant methods for NPD.In particular, this comparison draws out

that other methods aretrying to achieve the same objectives: the creation of productsand

services with value to the customer, the reduction of time-to-market and the efficient

use of resources. This inference implies that managers of new product (and service)

development can choose from a wider pallet of methods and approachesto enhance the

performance of R&D and to connect better to manufacturing (including supply chains).

Inevitably, this has implications for research on (lean) product and service development;

hence, this paper sets out a research agenda based on the deliberations and gaps that

have been uncovered in the discourse.

Introduction

Traditionally, lean thinking as an approach to ratio-

nalization is associated with manufacturing; after its

conception for manufacturing (Ohno 1988; Womack

et al. 1991), there was an increasing number of at-

tempts to transfer its principles, tools and techniques

to other processes, such as new product development

(NPD) (e.g. Baines et al. 2006, p. 1539; Hoppmann

et al. 2011, p. 3; Salgado et al. 2014, p. 3). This

attempt to apply it to NPD is often designated

‘lean product development’. The emergence of

lean product development should be set off against

other approaches for the processes, methods and

This work was supported by the FAPEMIG Foundation

(APQ-00976-13) and the CNPq (Process 249160/2013-7).

We also would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for

comments on an earlier version of this paper.

management of NPD that appear in literature. In this

context, some works expose the existence of a wide

array of approaches: sequential phasing for NPD (e.g.

Bullinger et al. 2003, p. 281; Krishnan et al. 1997;

Takeuchi and Nonaka 1986); product platforms (e.g.

Meyer and Utterback, 1993; Sanchez 2004; Shamsuz-

zoha and Kekale 2010); concurrent engineering (e.g.

Koufteros et al. 2001); waterfall models (e.g. Bassler

et al. 2011, pp. 308–309; Bullinger et al. 2003,

p. 281; Joore and Brezet 2015, p. 93); stage-gate

models (e.g. Cooper 1990); spiral development (e.g.

Bassler et al. 2011, pp. 308–309; Joore and Brezet

2015, p. 93); capability maturity model (e.g. Dooley

et al. 2001; Veldman and Klingenberg 2009); design

for six sigma (e.g. Ba˜

nuelas and Antony 2003);

and product life-cycle management (e.g. Hicks and

McGovern 2009). Hence, lean product development

can be seen as only one of the approaches currently

being adopted by organizations that are attempting

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904 E. Gomes Salgado and R. Dekkers

to maximize value, increase quality, shorten lead

times, increase efficiency of resources and lower

costs for NPD. This raises the first question of this

review: how is lean product development based on

lean thinking positioned in the rationalization of

NPD?

Objectives for review

In this context of lean product development being one

approach to rationalization, there are three concerns.

First, although variousstudies on NPD have been con-

ducted (Baines et al. 2006, p. 1542), it appears that the

mere conversion of principles taken from lean manu-

facturing to NPD settings does not necessarily equate

to an effective, lean NPD; it is sufficient to mention

that numerous companies face difficulties in carrying

out lean product development appropriately (Le´

on

and Farris 2011, p. 29). Second, for some researchers

(e.g. Freire and Alarc´

on 2002, p. 252; Pernst˚

al et al.

2013, p. 2799), lean product development is not easy

or not simply a matter of implementing some of its

techniques and methods; they claim that lean is a way

of thinking that should be adopted throughout the

whole company. Third, MacCormack et al. (2012,

p. 34) mention that companies must make substantial

efforts to ensure that their NPD approaches are

better aligned with their business needs. Thus, it

seems clear that NPD needs to be fully integrated

with strategic management, which consequently

should also apply to lean product development. This

strategic alignment makes it a more difficult task to

discern the benefits of lean product development as a

singular approach. Therefore, the second objective of

this review is to shed some light on this controversy

over what the principles and scope of lean product

development are vs. which benefits it brings to

firms.

In addition to addressing this controversy about

the uniqueness of its principles that it covers and

what it brings to a firm, another reason for this paper

is that lean product development is still considered

a relatively new and promising approach to NPD,

and therefore still lacks systematic comparison with

other approaches to NPD (Rozenfeld et al. 2006,

p. 34; Schulze and St¨

ormer 2012, p. 71). Further-

more, Hoppmann et al. (2011, p. 13) assert that there

are no empirical studies about the implementation

of lean product development, apart from those about

Toyota’s decades-long evolution of NPD. This stance

is supported by Johansson and Sundin (2014, p. 119),

who find that the literature has offered fairly poor

evidence regarding the industrial applicability of lean

product development. In addition, Letens et al. (2011,

p. 69) contend that there is much more understanding

of the characteristics of effective lean manufacturing

systems than those of effective lean product devel-

opment. Therefore, a number of questions remain

concerning the applicability of lean thinking concepts

in NPD to various organizations and contexts. The

lack of evidence underlines that it is necessary to con-

duct a study comparing lean thinking for NPD with

lean thinking for manufacturing. Once this compar-

ison has been made, it will be possible to answer the

question as to what lean product development brings

to the table that other approaches do not. Therefore,

this review scrutinizes the tenets of lean thinking

for NPD and contributes to the debate on its added

value relative to other approaches, concepts and

methods.

Scope and outline of paper

Thus, this review evaluates the conceptualization of

lean product development, identifies the benefits it

brings to organizations, and compares it with other

approaches for NPD.The five principles of lean think-

ing outlined by Womackand Jones (1996, pp. 16–26)

are taken as a starting point, knowing that others have

used and extended this view for lean product develop-

ment. Making use of this particular conceptualization

for lean product development, the review questions

for this paper are: (1) Beyond lean thinking, which

characteristics, methods and tools have been added

for the conceptualization of lean product develop-

ment? (2) Do authors refer to methods and tools other

than those covered by this original writing about lean

thinking and the original concepts for lean product

development? (3) Is there mention of or comparison

with other methodologies for NPD? By addressing

these three questions, this paper not only adds a crit-

ical review of lean product development, but also of-

fers a holistic perspective to existing reviews of lean

product development.

The paper is organized as follows.The review starts

by looking at its rationale and approach in the next

section; the results of the systematic retrieval of liter-

ature are also found there. A section about the tenets

of lean product development follows;this section also

discusses some of the assumptions made by authors

about applying lean thinking to NPD. The section

thereafter discusses the findings, while the final sec-

tion concludes with implications for research and

practice.

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