Lean Management Of In-house Product Development Of L Company

With annual shipments declining,PC industry is currently in a downturn.The reason behind is that more and more emerging electronic devices with multiple entertainment functions gradually replace typical personal computers,which leads to a decline in computer replacement ratio.L Company that is in a difficult external environment loses its first position of market share in the industry.In order to return to the first place,the company has proposed a higher market share target and new strategy regarding product portfolio and positioning.To achieve this,the company need to cooperate with the new proposal and pick up typical project cases to re-arrange the development process and resource allocation for non-value added activities removal and performance improvement,so that it will help the company to accomplish its goal via fast response to the market.Obviously,“Leaning Management” methods are perfect problem-solving approaches to address the challenge.In this context,it is necessary to study the in-house project which is the epitome of innovation ability and technological strength of the company.It will be helpful to find the phenomenon with lean thinking,to use lean tools to identify non-value-added activities in the development process,and then to use the project management system skills and tools to test and improve the problems,expecting to reduce waste in the project development process.In the thesis,“Six-sigma Management Theory”,“Lean Production Management Theory” and “Constraint Management Theory” is used as the basis of research work by combing the current situation of research and development process,resources and performance to find the direction of lean development of the in-house project,and “DMAIC model” is used as main analysis framework.Firstly,“SIPOC model” is applied to narrow down the analysis scope.Then,“Field Observation" method is used to focus on the phenomenon and the problems behind it.Thirdly,the root causes of the problems are screened one by one through the methods of "Fishbone Diagram" and "Five Whys".Then,to solve those problems,the key improvement methods,i.e.template optimization,"Critical Chain Method" and PDCA-based performance indicator design,etc.,are put forward to better control scope change,identify risk,compress schedule,improve communication model,resource allocation and performance evaluation.As optimization proposals,all the methods work on the "Triple Constraints" balance of the project management,which is quality,time and cost.In addition,it is a great help to involve project management office to exert its functions and release personnel training program,which ensures the whole system works smoothly.