ABSTRACT
Some consultancy groups are trying to get to grips with what it means – but struggle to transcribe the practices of Lean Manufacturing into the world of engineering. However, Lean Engineering or Lean Product Development feels more like an exciting new frontier. Innovation means offering our customers new ways to solve their problems. Mastering innovation means regularly proposing new features rather than wanting to integrate everything into a single product that becomes difficult to get right. Innovation is a nexus between creativity and the customer. It takes place when creativity successfully meets a customer's need, want, or desire. ‘Feature creep’ – the tendency to add too many new features – makes a product more complex and can affect quality, as well as having a detrimental impact on the entire product life cycle, making it too expensive to produce, install, and maintain.
