Value stream mapping along the product development process

Today's business conditions are characterized by increased competition. Therefore enterprises have to cope with shorter product life cycles, higher product complexity and more product variants. The reaction of many enterprises is to launch new products in shorter intervals. This confronts companies with the challenge to pass through the product development process faster. The product development processes need to be parallelized and waste within the processes needs to be identified. In the past, methods of Lean Production Systems have been successfully used to identify waste and increase customer value in all processes. Especially the value stream mapping method is used to identify waste in processes and to concentrate on value creation. To improve the entire product development process from development to start of production, this process has to be mapped and analyzed. therefore, this article analyzes different value stream mapping methods regarding the specific requirements of the product development process. In the following, an approach is presented which has been tested in an enterprise in order to improve the product development process.