Design management using knowledge innovation and visual planning

An open platform used for industrialised house-building imposes restrictions on the flexibility of the product offering when developing design standardisation. How design process standardisation incorporates variations in products has not been widely studied. The aim of this research is to explain how design breakdown enables Lean Product Development Flow (LPDF) and look-ahead planning in an industrialised house-building context where an open platform is used. A case study was conducted of how one of the leading industrialised house-building companies in Sweden introduced the LPDF tool Knowledge Innovation/Visual Planning (KI-VP) into their design process. The implementation of KI-VP led to an increased cross-functional understanding of relationships between activities, which are an important factor in achieving flexibility and a synchronised workflow. By using design standardisation, look-ahead planning was implemented and used in the management of design flow. Standardisation through design breakdown provides a basis for knowledge innovation that enables improvement of the open platform using a bottom-up approach and increases the production flow.