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Summary: Real thinking and action tools you can use
Review: If you're looking for a book to arm you with the latest buzzwords and easy answers, this is not for you. If you're looking for a useful framework for thinking about product design and tools for applying principles, this is an excellent buy. This book is clearly written, well-organized, and full of useful information. Unlike many management books, it's not 20 pages of information stretched out to 200 pages in order to make a book. Also, unlike most product development books, this book is of great value not just to product managers and designers, but would be a great read for financial managers and marketing managers. A manufacturing manager reading this book will smile with satisfaction at seeing common modern manufacturing principles well applied to the design realm. The only weak points I can think of are: 1) That it may be useful for the author to break out case studies rather than keeping them in the same typeface intermingled with the rest of the text. 2) No real advice is given on how to overcome real-world resistance to these ideas. Some sage advice on how to introduce these concepts and tools into organizations with existing biases and cultures could be a real benefit to practitioners. These are minor objections though. Whether you're in a software start-up or part of a Fortune 500 company design team doing existing product improvement, this book contains useful information that will enhance your understanding of what you're doing right and what you could do better - and WHY!
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Summary: every design engineer should read this book.
Review: Managing the Design Factory; A Product Developer's Toolbox, by Donald G. Reinertsen, is an important book on how successful companies should develop new products. Many popular management books share some common themes such as; JIT, kanban, lean manufacturing, reducing WIP, quick turn times, low inventory. Unfortunately, the development process in most companies has been slow to apply these insights to their engineering and design practice. Reinertsen does a superb job of showing how this is done. The Design Factory exists for one purpose - the same as the manufacturing factory - to make a profit. The focus of the book is on tools, not rules and rituals. These are practical tools that account for varied situations. The information is presented in a form that an engineer can understand and appreciate, but without unnecessary difficulty. There are excellent sections on queue and information theory, and capacity utilization and batch size, and on eliminating useless controls. I agree completely with the 'do it, try it, fix it' approach to development, and not being burdened with trying to make it right the first time. Every practicing design engineer should read this book.
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Summary: The first book I recommend on new product development.
Review: Over years of working to improve the process of new product development in organizations with which I have been associated, I have read many books on new product development and reducing cycle time of new product development. I regularly am also asked about these topics in college and executive courses I teach. There is no single book that completely covers these topics. However, if you only have time to read one book, I think Reinertsen's book is the one to start with. It is a real eye opener. Many profound(!) and extraordinarily productive concepts and methods are presented in a reasonably sized, easy to understand volume. You won't go wrong in buying it.
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Summary: Fast, practical, data based methods for R&D decision making
Review: Reinertsen's book is a hands-on method for improving product devlopment decision making. Based on the business case for the product under development (new product revenue, profit, timing) managers and engineers learn to make real time decisions that are aligned with the business goals. For example, as a product development manager in the IC business, should I invest in additional IC layout personnel to get my chip out 3 months sooner. Allows you to logically analyze the decison and then document and explain to management your thought process for adding resources of a particular type (or not). First book I've seen that applies the power of the JIT/kanban philosophy to the R&D process. Focus is on reduced WIP (projects), measuring queues, eliminating bottlenecks, etc. in the devlopment environment. Something you can actually use to improve upon your execution. Very insightful. If you are responsible for bringing new products to market and want a framework for analyzing your real life problems and alternatives for solving them, this book is for you.
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Summary: Advanced Tools for Managing Product Development
Review: There are no best practices for product development. Instead, there are dozens of choices that vary depending on what you are trying to optimize: speed, unit cost, expense, or product performance. In this book I have tried to capture a more advanced and systematic approach to development process design. Some of the ideas challenge traditional concepts, like doing it right the first time,loading to full utilization, and creating process maps
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