Designing the Future, How Ford, Toyota, and other world-class organizations use lean product development to drive innovation and transform their business, by James M. Morgan and Jeffrey K. Liker, McGraw-Hill 2019

By the time you read this book, the world of new product design and development, particularly automotive and tech, will have changed again, and that's exactly what we want. But in the meantime...

This volume is one of few new product development titles - published 2019.  Although it covers one new product concept with an eye toward lean, it does include stories and examples drawn from industry giants.  Toyota, of course, is the star of this volume along with Ford, with great detail on their new product process covered through the book, particularly in Chapter 7, "The Pursuit of Product Perfection."

Designing the Future hits automotive in particular, but there are other industries - robotics for instance, and Herman Miller -  scattered throughout. Chapter 8, "Designing the Future by Linking Strategy to Execution, A Toyota-Tesla Comparison," lays out a stark comparison of Tesla's electric car development strategy and process with Toyota's.  The authors disparage Musk's approach, although within a year of its launch, Tesla captured huge market share and profitability leading to the next generation of electric vehicles positioned far ahead and with great model variety and style compared to Toyota's initial offering, the Prius.  That contrast and the differing leadership approaches - Musk vs. Toyota - deserves more attention because when rule-breakers like Musk appear on the new product horizon, competitors like Ford and Toyota can learn from it. 

Chapter 7 , "The Pursuit of Product Perfection," is key to Designing the Future, because it starts with the customer and builds from there.  "Toyota has a very simple and challenging  way of thinking about customer satisfaction: 'If even one customer has a defective product, that represents 100% of our products to that customer,' and 'The product is both the vehicle the customer buys and their overall experience including dealer and service experience.' "  As a model of  customer-defined value this simple concept is portrayed as a unifier - for the market as well as the manufacturing workforce.

In a similar way, Steve Jobs is portrayed as living by the same intense commitment to the product experience - to the design, appearance and delivery of his unique devotion to simplicity.

If you are looking for technical details on just the new product development process - the stage gate process, for instance, or rapid development -  you'll have to check out more technical offerings.  But if you are looking for a new product development concept  grounded in the lean philosophy, including leadership, culture, and Toyota teachings, this is a great place to start. Recognize that because innovation is now the driver of the US's competitive manufacturing comeback and growth, we need every advantage available to us.  Remember that because design complexity and supply chain complexity have grown exponentially in the past ten years of automotive production, and added to the high-stress world of automotive design and launch, its now more important to consider software tools that contract and speed the process.  

Patricia E. Moody

FORTUNE magazine  "Pioneering Woman in Mfg" 

IndustryWeek IdeaXchange Xpert

A Mill Girl at Blue Heron Journal, on-line resource for business thought-leaders and decision-makers,  patriciaemoody@gmail.com