OOBEYA: The “Big open office” that promotes more innovation, lower costs, higher quality, and fewer last-minute changes.
In the last few years global competition, the reduction of products life cycle, the continuous progress of technology, have made innovation the key competitive factor for any business. The innovation process must be become faster and faster for the very survival of a business depends on its capacity to create new products. How is it possible to innovate more rapidly and effectively? Are there tools and methods that help reduce time-to-market, i.e. the time between the perception of market’s needs and the sale of a product capable to satisfy those needs? Experience shows that such methods exist (QFD, DFX, FMEA, Design Review, TRIZ,etc..) but are not used with an effective and integrated approach with the consequence that normally they fail to reduce time to market. The approach called Lean Product Development with its 13 principles and its waste hunting is the best known answer to the need of reducing costs and times and improving quality in the innovation process. Oobeya is the catalyst that makes this new approach possible and productive.
What is Oobeya
One of the 13 principles of Lean Product Development, suggests to use visible tools to manage innovation processes. In practice, Oobeya is a room organized according to a predefined pattern which makes it possible to visually manage the whole innovation process from conception to industrialization, production and sale.
Inside Oobeya short meetings are held in order to coordinate the efforts of all people involved.
To simplify matters one can say that Oobeya is an alternative method of project management.
Let us see what happens inside the Oobeya:
1. People work as a team, a real inter functional team which includes since the very start not only technical designers, but also people from Marketing, Production, Industrialization, Quality Assurance, ICT and Customer Service.. Working in team has many advantages for at least two reasons: it allows to see all critical aspects since the very beginning and it accelerates the problem solving process. Suffice it to think of the industrialization problems that can be avoided by sharing certain information in advance or of the suggestions that can be provided by Customer Service.
2. Objectives must be clear and shared since the very beginning. And not only those related to the “functions” of the new product, but also those related to production, costs, quality and service. Experience tells us that lack of clear objectives is one of the main sources of waste.
3. Problems and risks of whatever nature are continuously monitored. Corrective actions are defined and promptly implemented by the team.
4. Broad plans in line with project objectives are shared since the very beginning. Detailed plans are delegated to each person.
5. Visible management makes communication and coordination much easier and eliminates exhausting meetings, minutes writing, communications via e-mail, Excel files with complicated Gantt. In a word it eliminates bureaucracy which is sheer waste. Whoever wants to know the status of a project can see it just taking a glance at the Oobeya.
6. The team defines and continuously updates a set of indicators linked to the objectives of the project (actual hours, product costs, process costs, carry over level, number of formalized check lists etc..) Thanks to these measures and to the subsequent decisions they suggest it is possible to start a continuous improvement process.
Conclusions
Where Oobeya is used many things change. The elimination of wastes significantly reduces time to market (sometimes 50% or more) and makes it possible to employ resources in value adding activities.. As a consequence a real “new products factory” starts working and produces more and more new products in shorter and shorter times.
Production value streams become operational in a very short time and quality improves significantly. Working environment and relationships among colleagues improve; people feel more responsible, motivated and conscious of the importance of their contribution to the success of their company. People’s competence and flexibility improve because of the inter functional exchange of knowledge. Project leaders instead of wasting their time in bureaucratic activities (updating Gantt, endless meetings etc.) concentrate on useful and valuable activities. All the knowledge accumulated during problem solving sessions is not wasted, but formalized for use in future projects.
Whoever wishes to know more about Lean Product Development, waste hunting in product development processes and Oobeya, can contact me at Diego Balbinot – GC&P.