An analysis of methods to achieve robustness towards a lean product development process

摘要

Since Taguchi’s introduction to robustness much has been researched about it, particularly into the field of newproduct development. Despite the attention given to the subject by academia, recent research has found thatindustry has yet to fully grasp its benefits. Among the main attributed factors, lie the complexity of the proposedstatistical tools and a general misconception of the concept and its implementation. Based on Toyota’s ProductDevelopment System, the term Conceptual Robustness is broadly defined based on three forms of variation:physical, design and market. Parting from the this definition and as part of the LeanPPD Project, the objective ofthis paper’s contribution is threefold: 1), to present the state of the art on research in the area of robustness, 2)propose a taxonomy in order to understand the different scopes of available resources and 3) finally identifying thepossibilities to achieve conceptual robustness (that of Sobek et al., 1999) with the available resources presented tothe industry by academic research.