R&D executives are just beginning to consider implementing the principles of lean manufacturing. However, because R&D has different economics and different value creation mechanisms than manufacturing, lean R&D must differ substantially from lean manufacturing. Fortunately, many familiar lean concepts such as controlling queues, reducing batch size, and reducing waste can easily be transported into R&D organizations. Others, like variability reduction, must he approached very differently, because eliminating all variability in R&D also eliminates all value-added. Lean principles, used skillfully offer the potential to simultaneously improve the cost, quality and speed of the R&D process.
