Managers of design departments face numerous obstacles and questions when trying to make internal changes, including – Identifying waste in the design process Eliminating bottlenecks Reducing repetition to an absolute minimum Knowing when to employ parallel design instead of letting a designer work on a project from start to finish In this text, consultants Sekine and Arai first identify the difficulties of transforming designers from isolated, multi-project employees to team-based, production-style workers. They then explain how the latest production improvement tools such as U-cell design, one-piece flow, and waste elimination methods elicit maximum productivity from designers. A hands-on training for dramatically increasing the output of design departments, this comprehensive guide is filled with exercises, charts, Q&A, and a successful real world case study. Reaching far beyond theoretical discussion, it offers all of the information, data, and tools needed to immediately implement improvement.