Understanding the approaches to create a process architecture for lean thinking

Nowadays consumers are expecting the launch of new products with lower prices and shorter development times. One key strategy for companies to achieve this challenge is to implement a lean product development process. Aligned to the lean thinking implementation, many companies have defined a process architecture. Such process architecture enables teams working on projects to understand the value added activities, define roles and identify the interdependencies among the different tasks to be carried out when developing a new product. There are various approaches to develop a process architecture. Thus, research was carried out within the LeanPPD project to understand the approaches followed by different organizations to develop their process architecture. A cross-industry sample of 18 companies from Switzerland, Italy, UK, Germany, USA and Mexico was interviewed. This paper summarizes the results highlighting the companies preferred timeframes, frameworks, organizational structures, tools and resources. To conclude, based on the findings a model is proposed to summarize a set of identified best practices which are recommended when developing and implementing a process architecture.