Understanding customer value and waste in product Development: Evidence from Switzerland and Spain

To achieve a Lean Product Development Process, it is necessary to define the value for the customer and eliminate waste. Therefore, the objective of this paper is twofold: 1) to present the state of the art about existing methods to assess customer value and define the different types of waste that can be identified in the product development process and 2) to summarize the results of eleven face to face interviews done in different companies located in Switzerland and Spain to understand how these latter firms define value and waste, and the practices which these companies are currently using. This research supports the results of the LeanPPD project funded by the European Commission (NMP-2008-214090), which is developing a methodology to measure value from customers' perspective.