CRC Press Lean-Driven Innovation: Powering Product Development at The Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company

In 2005, Goodyear�s research and development (RandD) engine was not performing up to its full potential. The RandD organization developed high-quality tires, but the projects were not always successful. Goodyear embarked on a major initiative to transform its innovation creation processes by learning, understanding, and applying lean product development principles. Within five years, Goodyear saw its product development cycle times slashed by 70 percent, on-time delivery performance rise close to 100 percent, and throughput improve three-fold � all achieved with no increase in the RandD budget.Lean-Driven Innovation: Powering Product Development at The Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company describes in great detail how the Goodyear team was able to achieve such significant improvements. Revealing the ups and downs of this successful transformation, the book shares experiences of how this seismic change was managed, how people were engaged, and how Goodyear dramatically reinvigorated its product development and innovation processes�and, in the process, delivered substantial more value to customers and to the company.The book also explains how lean product development helped Goodyear dramatically improve revenue by having every new product available when the market needed it. Presenting wide-ranging perspectives from all levels of leadership, this book is ideal for anyone in RandD daring to take on a lean initiative in RandD or who is struggling with a lean transformation that is not delivering to its full potential. Since the book focuses on universal lean principles, it is as insightful to other manufacturing and nonmanufacturing disciplines in any industry as well.The book presents invaluable insights gained by the author during his 36 years within Goodyear, of which 10 have been directly involved in trying to develop, implement, and sustain lean to achieve the company�s business objectives. It distills ideas, prac Review "Lean-Driven Innovation illustrates that the application of lean principles and practices entails more than simple cut and paste implementation of factory-floor practices to the complex knowledge work of engineering and innovation. Lean thinking applied to product and process development shares the basic principles of lean operations but goes about actualizing them in very different ways. In sharing the compelling story of applying lean principles to R&D processes in the large, global, complex enterprise that is Goodyear, Norbert Majerus offers a path for improving innovation processes that readers will find practical and applicable regardless of their business type or company size."―John Shook, Chairman and CEO, Lean Enterprise Institute"Lean-Driven Innovation provides a set of guiding principles for how to build an innovative organization that are based on science and hard-won experience. The principles are brought to life by great examples from Goodyear’s impressive lean transformation in R&D. This is a must-read for innovation leaders. Although based on a transformation in R&D, the thinking applies equally well to software development and other project-based knowledge work."―Peter T. Ward, Director, Center for Operational Excellence, The Ohio State University"A candid and well-told story of the process by which a strong and innovative engineering culture incorporated the powerful principles of lean product development."―Don Reinertsen, Author of The Principles of Product Development Flow"Norbert’s work is a particularly impactful effort as it is not purely academic or theoretical, but rather based and vetted upon the years of hard-fought experiences and knowledge gained at Goodyear throughout its lean product development journey. Readers will undoubtedly gain insights into a number of promising continual improvement processes that may be applied at their companies for immediate and positive impact."―Rich Gildersleeve, Chief Technology Officer, DJO LLC "In Lean-Driven Inno