Lean Management Of Elevator Controller Development

As for the mainland China, following the Economy Open-up, with popularity growing, residence and office building growing, facility and construction growing, the elevator production volume has been sustained in a high level. Early in 2007, China has been the top of the world's elevator production with a percentage of 40% out of the entire globe. It is believed that after 2009 the whole elevator market of China will continue to grow at a steady speed.Simultaneously, the requirement of the entire elevator market is evolving with a diversity trend in product feature since development of elevator market; it is concluded that the main features of elevator product is:(1) Energy saving, low down the operation cost of elevator unit(2) Less maintenance or maintenance free product with a long life time(3) Higher reliability(4) Ultra low cost(5) Space efficientTherefore, a critical challenge turns out over new product development within elevator industry with following sympathies:(1) Dramatic increase of labor cost and raw material cost, together with an down trend of the pricing resulted from competition, the revenue of the enterprise declines(2) Diverse requirement of the marketing following technology evolvement(3) Over cost reduction brings serious difficulty in sustain quality of the productCompared to famous brands, like OTIS, Mitsubishi and Thyssen, most companies of China have a distance to catch up in new product development cycle time, development quality and development cost control.Under this background, this paper focuses on research upon the application of Lean principles to development process, and based on theoretical study and practice of variety profession & professors, this paper builds up a framework of Lean Development research with a in-depth study of the elevator company representative– Company T for which the author works. A thorough assessment of how feasible Lean could be toward development process carried out following a serious, in-depth consideration the"flow"philosophy– core thinking of Lean, by doing this author wants to tell how"value stream"exists and appears in development environment. There is different typical waste in development compared to manufacture, thus the way eliminate those waste, with different characteristics. The paper creatively develops Lean development principles based on benchmarking between manufacture and development according to 8 Lean principles. To go with that, author builds a'pull'relationship with internal customers. By continuous coaching and develop employees, sharing knowledge between each other, the purpose of these practice is to eventually form a continuous improvement culture within team.The paper delivers a Lean product development model by study typical case in development and a close focus of elevator industry circumstance.Research on Lean thinking nowadays is becoming more and more diverse; however, the Lean development research just started, there is not released or published work which systematically states Lean development. This paper stated waste in development and the mechanism to prevent the root of those waste by benchmarking of Lean in manufacture, the feasibility of apply Lean manufacture principles to development and statement of Lean development principles, which is first time mentioned within China.Except that, the paper, oriented in customer, and try to build"continuous value stream"by following Lean development process, improving the process by elimination of different waste. Another emphasis is continuous coaching to sustain a continuous improvement company culture. The author hopes it will be helpful for whole elevator industry upon new product development.