"Success is Assured" was born from a pair using those design practices over a century ago: The Wright Brothers. They set about methodically learning the causal relationships between the different design decisions they needed to make and the performance of the airplane. The Wright Brothers fundamentally transformed the front end of development into a sharply focused learning and decision-making process, and thereby eliminated the late - process rework in which their competition was stuck.

Similarly, Toyota built an amazing manual product development system that consistently created a cadence of high quality products that customers want. Myriads of Lean principles, jargon, and tools have been introduced and applied with minimal impact on design loopbacks, engineering productivity, and knowledge reuse within small to midsize engineering companies - and almost no penetration within highly complex engineering companies. This book teaches methodologies to relentlessly expose knowledge gaps and trade-offs early and optimize results before detailed design begins, thereby avoiding the expensive firefighting and engineering rework that consume most of our engineering capacity today. This book teaches new thinking and methodologies to convert the chaotic front end of product development into a convergent process of set-based learning and continuous innovation - a game changer for companies that depend upon a steady flow of innovative products.

Watch this video and understand how to consistently satisfy your customers on-time and on-budget! Visit www.SuccessIsAssured.com

About the Author
Penny W. Cloft Penny worked at Pratt & Whitney for 35 years. She spent most of that time in Engineering as a design and systems engineer. In the early 90's she was part of the on site engineering team at P&W's North Haven airfoil facility supporting the lean transformation to just in time manufacturing. This transformation is described as the "Acid Test" for large companies with complex products in Jim Womack's book Lean Thinking. That experience had a profound affect on Penny and led her to seek positions where she could apply her new lean learning. Penny successfully led several groups in both Operations and Engineering to reduce their process lead times and improve quality output and customer satisfaction. She joined the Systems Engineering Group in 2005 and became involved in an effort to improve the commercial jet engine product development process. Michael Kennedy's books influenced Penny's process improvement approach. Her team of engineering and operations experts transformed P&W's development process from a strict phase gate process to a modified phase gate process with disciplined integrating events that provide focus on knowledge gaps early in the development process. She founded PK Lean Consultants LLC so she could work with other design and manufacturing companies to lean out their technical and business process and become best in class. Michael N. Kennedy Michael had a 30 year career at Texas Instruments Inc., where he was the lead engineer on many development projects including missile system products and manufacturing systems. During his last years at TI, he was a leader in reengineering the core engineering and manufacturing processes, including adopting concurrent engineering, solid modeling CAD systems, CAD/CAM integration, and driving TI's quality initiatives, leading to TI's winning of the Malcolm Baldrige Award. For the past 10 years, Michael has researched and applied the principles of Toyota's outstanding product development system to dramatically improve companies' productivity metrics. His first book, Product Development for the Lean Enterprise, explained the Toyota underlying philosophy for developing products. His second book, Ready, Set, Dominate, extends the learning into implementation strategies and discusses two case studies in mapping these methodologies to western companies. He is the co-founder and CEO of Targeted Convergence Corporation with the mission of developing models, training, and tools for implementing those principles into manufacturing companies. Brian M. Kennedy Brian is an INCOSE Certified Systems Engineering Professional (CSEP) who has spent more than 25 years designing complex software systems. He was Chief Architect of i2 Technologies' Supply Chain Planner and Demand Fulfillment applications, applying Toyota lean manufacturing, Theory of Constraints, and advanced optimization to the planning and scheduling of the larger supply chain, helping to establish a new market space (Supply Chain Management) and generating billions of dollars of value for i2's customers. Brian was named the first i2 Fellow and holds a dozen patents on the inventions that were the basis for those software systems. As co-founder and CTO of Targeted Convergence Corporation, Brian is responsible for the systems engineering of TCC's Success Assured (R) software and the associated training that is built upon the concepts and methodologies revealed in this book.

Reviews

"Success Is Assured is a practical guide to successful product development using 'Set-Based Design' principles and an 'Intelligent Fast Failure' approach. The authors rely on their extensive industry experience in their respective fields and as successful industry consultants helping to transform the way existing companies do business. An easy-to-read addition to the field with many new, useful conceptual models."

- Charlie Camarda, Astronaut STS-114 Discovery (Return to Flight mission), Former Director of Engineering, NASA Johnson Space Center

"In 1953, my dad led his development team at GM to design and build the iconic 55 Chevy in just 23 months - unheard of then and certainly not possible today. How did they succeed in that? Through focused learning and decision making leveraging strong engineering expertise. Over the last decade, we have strayed from that, focusing too much on tasks and schedules. This book shows us how to rebuild that capability through new analytical tools for decision-focused learning and the creation and reuse of visual knowledge. This is increasingly important as complexity is increasing dramatically and the need for effective and speedy product development is critical to success."

- David Cole, Ph.D., Chair, AutoHarvest; Chair Emeritus, Center for Auto Research; Chair, Building America's Tomorrow; Automotive Hall of Fame Inductee

"I wish this book was already written when we started our Lean Journey almost 11 years ago. It is a breakthrough in the thinking process on how to make decisions that will drive your business results to 'Success is Assured'! From the very core definition of the 'True North' of Product Development to the Enabler of all Enablers (the Causal Map), the authors' experience provides everyone clarity on how to learn faster and innovate better while having a lot more fun! My team and I are very enthusiastic and we almost cannot hold ourselves in anticipation of the great achievements we'll be able to provide to our business partners."

- Manoel de Queiroz Cordova Santos, Business Excellence Manager - Product Development, Embraer S.A.

"Transforming New Product Development for complex products is a difficult endeavor. As if the technical challenges generated by the large number of variables and interdependencies were not enough, the current leadership practices could drive the wrong behaviors, creating additional complications. What new behaviors should be embraced by leadership? How to tackle complicated technical interdependencies in a new and robust way? This book does an excellent job in covering both questions, using an approach that includes real and fictional stories, peppered with a lot of examples. Highly recommended for both leadership and technical experts embarking in their New Product Development transformation."

- Ovidiu Contras, Lean Coach, Bombardier Aerospace

"This book is invaluable for any team or organization aiming to design complex systems successfully. The practical knowledge based approach for robust decision making explained in the book, with lucid examples, is exceptionally relevant. The case study story is something most teams and organizations dealing with the design and development of complex systems can easily correlate with."

- Ramakrishnan Raman, ESEP, Assistant Sector Director - INCOSE Asia Oceania; Principal Systems Engineer - Honeywell

"As for any company in charge of developing new products, the key challenge is to define the solution that provides the best trade-offs between customer's needs and the Company's goals and capabilities to provide maximum value to both. The traditional Point-Based Design quickly converges on a solution based on a single point in the design space - a process which inevitably creates rework, delays and cost overruns. This book explains in a very effective instructive style the Set-Based Design approach - a most powerful method to develop better solutions. The key principle is to focus upfront in building key knowledge to make decisions by exploring the trade-offs between critical parameters and mapping an area of feasibility. This is the first book that describes Set-Based Design in an easy to apply way. It provides a set of powerful tools and methods developed by the authors and shows how to apply them through many examples. It provides clarity in how to conduct the development process and build it step by step with different enablers to assure success! This book is indispensable for anyone willing to make their process of product development much more valuable."

- Luc Delamotte, Senior Coach Lean Engineering, Lean Community Manager, Thales

"I have always liked Michaels approach to this complex subject. He has always been curious to learn more and challenge every 'truth' he encountered on his way seeking 'Success is Assured'. In this book the authors capture the true essence of the matter, what it takes to assure the success of the product development project. A real 'how to' book which will help many product developers to shorten lead times and to innovate! Read the book and apply the knowledge and your success will be assured."

- Peter Palmer, Chairman, Lean Product & Process Development Exchange (LPPDE); Senior Manager, R&D Way Office, Scania

"I highly recommend Success is Assured! To my knowledge, it is the only book in print that provides a detailed methodology on the application of set-based design to complex system development using real-world examples."

- Donny Blair, Senior Director of Engineering, L3 Technologies

"If you are still not convinced about the merits of Lean Product Development, read this book and you will be. Even if you are not an engineer."

- Dr. Goeran Gustafsson, Chalmers University of Technology

Book Information
ISBN 9781138618589
Author Penny W. Cloft
Format Hardback
Page Count 342
Imprint CRC Press
Publisher Taylor & Francis Ltd
Weight(grams) 1122g