Whittier Consulting Group, Inc.
P.O. Box 859
Camas, WA. 98607
503-701-3945

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Get More Value from Product Development

Katherine has helped us develop key examples of lean success which demonstrate our commitment and has supported us to the point where we are able to sustain the momentum ourselves going forward.
--Patricia Ranch, Product Quality Manager, The Toro Company

We help our clients dramatically improve product development performance, whether that is faster time-to-market, lower product costs, more engineering productivity or a deeper understanding of how to deliver customer value.

Typical Client Results

Our clients achieve gains in speed, quality and cost - in a way that's optimized to deliver the most important results first. They have delivered increased value to the business in these ways:

Faster time to market for innovations
Higher ROI from product development portfolios
Better engineering effectiveness and efficiency
Increased ability to leverage and reuse knowledge
Reduced reinvention and rework

To learn more about how we work with clients to achieve these results, read Our Approach and How To Begin an NPD Transformation.

Publications

PDMA Visions, June 2007: "What is Lean About Product Development?" is a survey of the lean product development landscape, to provide guidance to product development leaders on formulating a strategy for lean product development.

Journal of Product Innovation Management, May 2007: "The Toyota Product Development System" is a review of James Morgan and Jeffrey K. Liker's book describing Toyota's product development process. highlighting the book's strengths and weaknesses as a guide for lean product developers.

PDMA Visions, June 2008: "Why Six Sigma Experts Are Wrong About Product Development" acknowledges the difficulties product developers face when the corporate Six Sigma guys come calling, and provides some suggestions about how to respond so that Six Sigma efforts in product development actually improve product development performance.

Product Development Field Notes, Katherine Radeka's blog provides a fresh perspective on increasing product development performance.

Public Events

September 13 - 17, 2008 - Orlando, FL: PDMA International Conference I will deliver a half day post-conference lean product development workshop that will focus on techniques for eliminating the most common sources of waste in product development.

April 6 - 8, 2009 - Hilton Head, SC: Lean Product and Process Development Exchange Last year's LPPDE conference pulled together over 100 lean product developers for knowledge sharing and inspiration. This year, the conference will be even better, with more tracks, more workshops and more international presence.

Other thought leaders include Michael Kennedy, Durward Sobek, Bo Oppenheim of the Lean Aerospace Community and Jamie Flinchbaugh of the Lean Learning Center and more!.

If you think you have a great story to tell, use my contact form or call me at 206-274-6179. Registration information will be available on June 30, and space is limited this year, so you will want to register early. For updates, visit the conference website: http://www.lppde.org.

Visual Project Planning

Toyota researchers have described the "obeya" - a room dedicated to a project team with visual information about their projects posted on the walls.

"Obeya" simply means "Big Room." Here's what one section looks like:

In January, I was able to set up a visual project planning demonstration at LeanEx^SM in Chicago, IL.

Here are some more photos: Visual Planning Demonstration