Abstract

Lean is a system composed of well structured principles and shared culture that aim to deliver value to the customer and to eliminate process waste. While born from the roots of a steep recession in the Post War economy of Japan, lean approach was successfully used to shift the performance of the manufacturing sector by cutting waste while enhancing value. Management has become more aware of the importance to extent lean application to all the phases of the product life cycle such as Product Development (PD), in order to face the increasing market competition. Therefore, few initiatives in literature emerged to improve the understanding and application of Lean in various fields such as health care, software, product design, and business management. However, within these sectors the focus, measurements, and understanding of lean vary and shift with time.

This PhD research aims to understand value in Product Life Cycle with a focus on PD, and to develop a practically-applicable methodology based on value lean principles that supports optimization of the PD process and facilitates decision making.

The main questions initially addressed in this study are:

- What is value in Product Life Cycle? - What are the factors that influence value creation and destruction in PLC ? - How can value in PD shape value in Manufacturing? - How can value be modelled and measured to assist decision making?