Rapidly evolving technologies and changing global economic and strategic conditions require new approaches to product design and development, especially for complex systems such as aerospace products. MDC personnel create and facilitate the application of new techniques for rapid conceptual and preliminary design and efficient lean detail engineering. MDC's core lean capabilities include on-site seminars and a unique training simulation featuring a "game" to efficiently transmit the powerful, but sometimes difficult concepts, of lean to engineers and enterprise managers. Using these principles, MDC has created lean engineering and lean enterprise training programs for a number of major US aerospace corporations. The MDC staff has also created a manual on Value Stream Mapping for product development, and a set of new techniques and tools for rapidly exploring a large tradespace of conceptual solutions to complex problems. MDC has used tradespace exploration tools to conduct studies of complex aerospace systems for several government agencies, as a subcontractor to MIT's Space Systems, Policy, and Architecture Research Consortium. Additionally, lean tools can be used in order to efficiently produce rapid practical preliminary designs.

Some of these products were produced in cooperation with the Lean Advancement Initiative (LAI) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and are available only to members of the LAI consortium.

Click here for a downloadable brochure on MDC's Lean Enterprise Solutions.