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Now in its fourteenth year, PLM Road Map is bringing together two leaders experienced in driving successful action plans for product development. Both benefit from decades of experience in urging American industry to meet the challenge from Japanese manufacturing methods in aligning people, process, and technology.

In his presentation, What should be Lean about Lean Product Development?, Dr. Durward Sobek will challenge us all to abandon conventional thinking about product development, and to adopt a new perspective that has significant implications for the capabilities needed in human designers and computer-based tools alike. The application of lean manufacturing principles to product development organizations and processes has gained broad popularity. While these efforts can often yield impressive results, high performing lean product developers such as Toyota extend far beyond streamlining processes by eliminating waste. A number of fundamental principles based on Durward's own research and that of the late Dr. Allen C. Ward, set a foundation for building truly exceptional product development systems.

CPDA's long-term associates may recall first hearing from Durward when he contributed to our effort back in the late 1990's with his outstanding Ph.D. thesis, Principles that Shape Product Development Systems: A Toyota-Chrysler Comparison. Since then, he has frequently presented his findings on fundamental principles for product development, and published them with articles in the Harvard Business Review, Sloan Management Review, and IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management.

Bringing the conference to a close, Michael Kennedy will offer a keynote presentation on Redefining Lean through Set-Based Knowledge. The success of the Toyota Production System has intensified lean initiatives that target the transformation of manufacturing companies worldwide - and their IT systems. This lean thinking now impacts the plans for product development and innovation processes. Yet, Toyota extends lean thinking far beyond the streamlining of the value supply chain. Lean at Toyota represents the rich harvesting of the knowledge the drives a relentless flow of products that customers want. In his presentation, Michael will summarize the critical cornerstones of the Toyota product development system, and clearly differentiate lean thinking as applied to production processes versus development. Even more crucial, he will address and issue challenges for ensuring PLM implementations will enable this thinking. It is imperative that companies integrate their strategies for lean thinking in product development with their strategy for implementing PLM on a broad scale. Michael will give us all guidelines for doing so.

A leader in organizational redesign for over 35 years, Michael correctly called for a fundamental paradigm shift in product development with Product Development for the Lean Enterprise. This book has become required reading for those driving change across their organization because of its pragmatic lessons in adapting Toyota's principles throughout an entire organization.

To find out more about PLM Road Map™ 2007 or to register for the event visit the CPDA web site at http://www.cpd-associates.com/index.cfm?content=include_conference07.cfm