New Product DevelopmentUsing our field-tested approach, we show your business how to apply Lean and Six Sigma tools to develop standardized, predictable NPD processes that align corporate and product strategies with market needs. We enable your developers to make improvements in:
• Product roadmap development
• NPD funnel management
• NPD toll-gate process flow, and
• New product introduction process flow
Through superior visibility, your organization is able to focus on areas of greatest strategic value and financial return. Through improved operations – such as advancing the NPD and NPI processes in parallel – the company gains enormous competitive advantage. With resources and budgets positioned by disciplined product development, your organization realizes improvements in overall process lead-time, productivity, time-to-market and return on R&D spends.
Administrative Process TransformationOur Lean Administrative Process Transformation provides an advanced approach to improving administrative, service and transactional processes by recognizing that traditional approaches to mapping value streams must be customized for the administrative environment. Instead of treating administrative areas as factory adjuncts or functional silos, we developed a proprietary methodology for mapping transactional information flows tailored to their work context. Value Stream Mapping Information Flow (VSMi) enables definition and visualization of the current state and guides associates toward achieving an improved future state through Transactional Process Improvement. Through our program, your administrative people learn to map their processes, free from the burden of working around the gaps associated with force-fitted manufacturing approaches – and learn to implement as a team.
Our ground-breaking approach includes methodology for successfully expanding VSMi to “non-transactional” yet enterprise critical processes such as product development, contracts management, project management, test and evaluation, quoting, engineering, human resources management, estimating, scheduling, load planning and diagnosis. Virtually all processes employing information can benefit from VSMi. With customer-facing processes put in place by capable cross-functional teams, your organization discovers and corrects problems before they impact your ability to serve. Following are representative results:
| Metric | Improvement (%) |
| Process Lead Time | 60 to 80 |
| Accounts Receivable Day Sales Outstanding |
10 to 20 |
| Call Center Productivity | 20 to 40 |
Project Summary: Lean for GE Consumer Finance
Lean Knowledge Suite: Lean Administrative Process Transformation
Lean Manufacturing TransformationDrawing on our extensive experience in enabling Lean Manufacturing in existing operations or during acquisition integration, we show you how to use Lean and Six Sigma tools and techniques to create repeatable and reliable processes that improve quality, speed and cost. Your organization benefits by reducing cash tied up in inventory and receivables, getting more from fixed assets, generating productivity savings through sourcing and infrastructure, and synchronizing supply chains with internal processes that link to customers’ workflow and demand.
Whether your organization engages continuous process manufacturing or discrete manufacturing, we help you realize the primary goals of Lean by adapting Lean techniques to exploit the process improvement opportunities unique to your environment. We show you how to prioritize Lean initiatives based on strategic initiatives and build a framework for process improvement tailored to the characteristics of your operations and the individual needs of your business. By using data-driven analysis to measure the benefit to the value stream and Return on Invested Capital improvement, your organization performs kaizen “with a purpose” and improves the processes that make the difference to the bottom line. You learn to apply the right Lean tools and principles to the right processes at the right points along the value stream, and wastes, in the form of setup time, downtime, non-standard work, in-process inventory, over-production, defects, movement, transportation, and other process deficiencies, are reduced or eliminated.
A review of the Lean Horizons Knowledge Transfer Suite, which adopts the fundamental principles that created DBS and teaches methodologies from actual enterprise-wide transformations, provides a more detailed view of our comprehensive solutions in Lean Manufacturing Transformation.
Summary of representative results:
| Metric | Improvement (%) |
| Annual Inventory Turns | 50 to 300 |
| On-Time Delivery | 60 to 80 |
| Productivity | 50 to 300 |
| Internal Quality PPM | 50 to 95 |
| External Quality PPM | 50 to 95 |
| Overall Equipment Efficiency (OEE) | 50 to 85 |
| Production Lead Time | 70 to 95 |
| Cost per Unit | 20 to 60 |
| Safety (Accident Frequency Rate) | 20 to 45 |
Project Summary: Lean Manufacturing Transformation
Industry Expertise: Manufacturing
Lean Knowledge Suite: Lean Manufacturing
