Lean product development and design management

For over 30 years, researchers and practitioners from diverse fields of knowledge aimed to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the New Product Development process (NPD), addressing complex design and production issues. At the end of the 90’s Kagioglou et al. (1998) stated that the manufacturing industry was under transformation due to increased globalised competition, which reflected on a need for companies to search for fast responses to changing customers’ requirements. The ability of companies to respond to those requirements relies on communication with customers and the capacity to translate their requirements into finished products and services, which is the main concern of NPD. This has also been the main focus of lean design and construction initiatives and remain as current today as it was more than 25 years ago.