Harnessing Product Families as a Foundation for Lean.
Assessing how value is created is a fairly complex undertaking. It requires scrutinizing not just the end product but each of the many elements, or increments of value, that go into building it. For a complex product like a car or an airplane, there might be hundreds or thousands of these elements each representing distinct increments of value that must be designed, produced, and delivered when needed by a customer. Deciding how these distinct elements will be managed is particularly critical because, in many ways, it sets the foundation for everything that follows.