Durward K. Sobek II.

This book describes what could be termed n ’engineering development secret’ -- the creation and application of visible knowledge to propel effective product development. Visible knowledge is a tool nearly lost in the West, but it has been used to great effect by Toyota in its 50 year march from non-competitiveness to its current status as the preeminent global automobile company.

Visible Knowledge for Flawless Design presents the reader with a systematic approach to create, capture, and display knowledge in a way that allows development teams to optimize the design of their products and production processes. Visible knowledge not only applies to knowledge management, but also provides a means of collaboration to facilitate better decision-making in the development process. The book provides a brief history and background of the technique, then takes the reader through example problems in a step-by-step workbook style that facilitates practice and application. It concludes with suggestions on implementation in the reader’s work environment.

Dr. Allen Ward is the patriarch of Lean Product Development. His efforts led to the rediscovery of Visible Knowledge and the recognition of its importance in the development of new manufactured products. Allen was driven by a desire to test his hypothesis that the optimal design would be achieved through a ’design compiler’ that would simultaneously evaluate all design variables to maximize the overall benefit for the customer. Or more simply put, if all of the data and trade-offs to a design were defined in advance, then simultaneously evaluating the design factors would lead developers to the optimal design solution.

Dr. Ward set out to study design processes in industry to understand how companies evaluated design parameters to optimize their designs. He discovered only one company in which developers methodically created knowledge, evaluated parameters in advance of making design decisions according to his hypothesis for optimal design, and reused that knowledge in subsequent design cycles. This company was Toyota and the development system employed there was multiple times more effective and efficient than anything else he found in his research. Dr. Ward referred to the technique he uncovered as ’visible knowledge.’ By carefully understanding the relationships between design parameters and product performance, then creating visible representations of those relationships, new knowledge is generated in such a way that engineering comparisons can be made quickly and efficiently resulting in faster decision-making with less design iteration. The general form of the solutions can then be stored and applied on all future problems that fit the form, greatly extending the development capability of the development team. Dr. Ward wrote a manuscript to describe visible knowledge, but tragically passed away before it was ever published. Visible Knowledge for Flawless Design is the completion of that manuscript. It has been corrected and compiled for publication in an effort to keep it as close as possible to the original manuscript, but updated and augmented in key areas to keep the text current and provide additional insight and examples.