The design of processes for lean product development

Today's product development processes have a number of deficits. These can be seen in many interfaces as a result of involving both too many people and too many computer aided tools. The structure of the development process is mostly based on activities and functional aspects, less on the product structure, which leads to many hierarchical planes. This fact requires much organizational effort for the administration of a high number of relations between subprocesses. These relations involve various types of information like drawings, calculation results, decisions, changes, responsibilities and so forth.