Cell Design
for Product Development

For Lean practitioners, the pinnacle of process improvement is the establishment of flow. Flow is defined as the continuous movement of products and information through a value stream. By establishing flow, idle time is eliminated - which is the single biggest contributor of cycle time in a process and represents a key source of waste.

Flow is facilitated through the establishment of cells. A cell is defined as the co-location of people (skills) and equipment required to create a product. In the factory, cells are dedicated to manufacturing and assembling a specific family of products.

In product development, however, cells are dedicated to the movement of product data and information. Consequently, implementation of product development cells are not bound by the physical constraints that are required for cells in the factory due to the absence of machines and other manufacturing support equipment.

In a product development environment, the cell concept can be facilitated through workstation hook-ups with electronic triggers established between employees to provide signals for incoming work.

In the Accelerated Product Development System, cell design and flow is established after the implementation of the Resource and Workload Management, and a knowledge-based Reuse Strategy, which represent Lean process fundamentals. This is necessary to insure wasteful activities and non-value-added tasks are eliminated prior to establishing flow for product development. The cell, capable of producing new products quickly and efficiently, will come to represent a product development center of excellence within the company.

For a company that is engaged in improving product development, it is important to establish flow at the appropriate time in the process improvement journey. Consequently, the establishment of a cell represents the last of streamlining elements associated with the APD System.