1 The Lean Aerospace Initiative

The author acknowledges the financial support for this research made available by the Lean Aerospace Initiative at MIT sponsored jointly by the US Air Force and a consortium of aerospace companies. All facts, statements, opinions, and conclusions expressed herein are solely those of the author and do not in any way reflect those of the Lean Aerospace Initiative, the US Air Force, the sponsoring companies and organizations (individually or as a group), or MIT. The latter are absolved from any remaining errors or shortcomings for which the author takes full responsibility. Introduction The essence of lean is very simple, but from a research and implementation point of view overwhelming. Lean is the search for perfection through the elimination of waste and the insertion of practices that contribute to reduction in cost and schedule while improving performance of products. This concept of lean has wide applicability to a large range of processes, people and organizations, from concept design to the factory floor, from the laborer to the upper management, from the customer to the developer. Progress has been made in implementing and raising the awareness of lean practices at the factory floor. However, the level of implementation and education in other areas, like product development, is very low. The Lean Aerospace Initiative (LAI) has been producing research in support of the military and industry since 1993 on the topic of lean and its benefits. Implementation of the research has been shown to have significant impact and interest. LAI is in a very unique situation at MIT to influence and educate world-class engineering students we have exposure to every day. This research will take advantage of this situation and produce a strategic framework for educating engineers on the front-end lean product development findings that have been produced through LAI. These include topics of understanding the customer and the product value, evaluating multidimensional risk, organizational impact on program performance, and many others. The research objectives are to: 1) synthesize the findings uncovered by LAI pertaining to non-manufacturing disciplines into a readily usable manner and 2) formulate a strategic approach for educating engineers on the tools and concepts that facilitate early problem synthesis, mission engineering, and front end product development. Overview There are six modules into which the LAI product development research has been organized. Module I is used to provide a fundamental framework of lean and its application to product development. Module II …