The Savvy Lean Product Development Conference
Integrating Toyota’s Product Development System Elements:
Putting Toyota’s Lean Principles into Practice

Wednesday, March 28, 2007
Holiday Inn Bloomington I-35W
Bloomington, MN

Toyota's Development System (TDS) offers the most effective and profitable system for generating growth from successful, timely and "LEAN" new product launches.

The Savvy Product Development Conference is for those who want to learn about and "SEE" the Toyota Development System. Six speakers and two exclusive, learning rich activities not found at other Product development conferences make this an "07 Must Attend” knowledge event. Dynamic product development leaders from corporations who are "early adopters" of TDS will present their case study experiences with the TDS. In the USA, these development managers may be the most advanced in their learning, interpreting and implementing elements of TDS.

These conference presenters will demonstrate their experiences, successes and failures, what works and doesn't work with the following Toyota TDS elements:

• set base concurrent engineering
  
• expert engineering competence
  
• the Visual project method
  
• the project leadership system
  
• capturing re-usable engineering knowledge
  
• make knowledge visual for continuous improvement
  
• focus on the customer value proposition
  

In addition, the Savvy Conference offers two features not found in any other design/development conferences: the Savvy "Obeya" Visual Project method used at Toyota and the Savvy expert panel. The Savvy expert panel is a consortium in which conference participants interact with Savvy members to discuss their experiences while getting started with TDS.

The Obeya is the visual management practice by which Toyota development, cross functional teams focus on the customer product concept and their design work. The Obeya enables team people to focus and collaborate on what is important to product design and synchronize their daily and weekly tasks to meet their schedules. They do not miss their launches.

There will be a complete Obeya Visual demonstration at this conference.

CONFERENCE SPEAKERS

"Getting Started on a Leveled PD Process Flow Using Visual Tools and the Product Roadmap"
Speaker: Tom Johnson P.E.
Former Director,
New Product Development
Tennant Corporation

Toyota creates leveled flow of its product development projects. Tom Johnson will demonstrate a way to lay out a visual product roadmap that clarifies the resources realities that Toyota and all lean product development organizations typically manage.

"Using VOC in the Set Base Design Convergence Method"
Speaker: David Hein
Director of Engineering
Nexengroup, Inc.

Toyota's chief engineer understands customer needs through his VOC work. The resulting product concept helps focus and direct multiple design solutions early. Multiple design solutions stimulate and develop engineers’ competence and allow management to converge on an optimal design. Dave Hein will describe his experiences in designing and implementing a compelling, VOC method for his Set Base design and a concurrent convergence system at Nexen.

"Using Performance Curves in New Product Development"
Speaker: Merle Meyer
Former Vice President, Product Development
Katun Corporation

Toyota's engineering expertise generates engineering knowledge from the tradeoff curves of its components and subsystems. This knowledge is used and re-used to save time at Toyota. Merle Meyer will describe his valuable initiative which helped Katun find and use existing product performance curves that saved development time by applying this knowledge to solve new product designs problems.

"Set Base Design Starts with Many Options"
Speaker: Mike Davis
Product Development Manager
Genie Industries

Toyota generates many design solutions to customer problems and thereby increase innovation and decreases the risk of wrong designs. Mike Davis will present the method that drives the entire design, testing, and development work at Genie.

"Using the Visual Knowledge System for Lean Development"
Speakers: panel of Savvy development program managers.

Toyota's development teams use a visual project method "Obeya" that creates instant learning and collaboration among the cross functional team members. The speakers will describe their Obeya experiences and detail the benefits.

Keynote Address: "Competitive Strategy: Western, Eastern and Boyd"
Speaker: Don Remboski
VP - Power Transmission and Controls, The Timken Company

Don Remboski will cover the differences between competitive strategy developed in western cultures and eastern cultures. John Boyd made a number of interesting observations on both, which are now becoming influential in developing competitive strategy for business.


Who Should Attend?

This is a "must participate" conference: you must hear these speakers and "see" their current experiences and important lessons learned if you want to make real improvements in your development process. They may be the most advanced leaders that you will hear at any 07 product development conference held anywhere.

The Savvy Product Development Conference
Wednesday, March 28, 2007
Holiday Inn Bloomington I-35W
1201 W 94th Street
Bloomington, MN 55431


Conference Sponsors:



The Savvy Consortium
Serving Early Adopters of the Toyota Development System
Minneapolis, MN