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To improve the effectiveness within a development, it is essential to eliminate waste. Several tools focus on this goal: Lean Engineering, Lean Manufacturing, Design For Six Sigma (DFSS) and the Best Methods approach. However, none of these tools are focused on the sharing of knowledge. Modification on a development or production process influences all stages of a project. By a coupling of all processes, all influence factors are covered leading to the strategy of a Product Lifecycle Management (PLM). All data which belong to development, logistics and sales are saved and administrated in a global information center. The existence of such a center and the evolution of design tools give us the opportunity of sharing process knowledge between all participants of a project. This data sharing process allows us to manage and optimize processes using objective criteria in order to find the best solution. In a dynamic world changes occur at all levels of a product development cycle.

Rybnik Engineering Center (REC) is the new R&D center developed by Tenneco in Poland. One of the key ideas behind the REC is to develop it based on the lean engineering principles. In a first step a white paper was established and agreed upon with senior management. This white paper consisted of: a vision a set of objectives derived from this vision and a road map to reach this vision The creation of REC has been articulated around 3 major themes: 1. PERSONNEL - It is about how to identify and hire people that will fit into our lean culture. A further challenge is to then train and mentor the people. A similar model known as the inverse-T at Toyota was implemented. Lastly, a network of partners has been established and integrated in the Tenneco development processes. 2. PROCESSES - Both engineering and cross functional processes have been systematically reviewed or new ones developed.

The Rybnik Eng Center was reactivated at the beginning of 2008. One of the objectives of this new center is to develop the lean spirit and to directly apply it to the new center. Two years have now passed and these 2 papers give the opportunity to review the current status and to reflect on the lessons learned so far on our lean journey. The 2 papers are structured around people, processes and tools. The first paper focuses on the people, the second one on the processes and the tools. Some great progress has been made in the different areas of application including: - Processes: Some key engineering processes in Testing, CAD, CAE and prototype shop were thoroughly investigated and improved. Especially the quality of the outputs and significant reductions in lead times have been achieved. - Tools and Technologies: Tenneco worked on both aspects, the soft and hard tools. Soft tools are covering visual management which allows a better alignment.

The Rybnik Engineering Center was reinforced at the beginning of 2008. One aim of this new center has been to develop the lean spirit and to directly apply it to the new center. Two years have now passed and these 2 papers give the opportunity to review the current status and to reflect on the lessons learned so far on our lean journey. The 2 papers are structured around people, processes and tools. The first paper focuses on people which arguably represents the most challenging aspect of the development of an R& D center abroad. One the key objectives of 2008-09 was to develop the engineering skills required to take over full customer projects. This target was especially challenging given the operating conditions, operation and capital expedites have been drastically reduced to the very severe downturn of the automotive industry in 2008. The first paper concentrates on the processes how to identify, hire, train and retain people.

After having successfully implemented lean manufacturing in the 1990ies and lean engineering since 2004, Tenneco Europe expanded lean to its administrative organizations in October 2009. The implementation approach was directly derived from lean engineering previously implemented in Tenneco Europe as this was considered closer to administration processes than manufacturing processes were. A first SAE paper on lean transactional was presented in 2011. This paper covered a vision, a road map and a process to roll out the lean Spirit in the Administrative world. This paper and the papers listed in the reference list provide in detail the lean tools and principles used in lean transactional and engineering. This new paper is focussed on some concrete applications where the lean mindset has been implemented mainly by the finance team supported by sales, project management, marketing, manufacturing and engineering.

[1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12] This paper describes the implementation of lean in the Human Resources department at Tenneco Europe. In the past, the implementation of lean transactional was mainly focused on Sales & Engineering and Finance. Our experience shows that the lean approach can be applied in a similar way as in Finance or Sales & Engineering. This paper illustrates some examples of critical processes related to Human Resources which have been improved. These include the “on-board” or integration process the management of employee flextime accounts process to create and manage a resignation certificate absenteeism reduction in one Tenneco plant For these three last processes, the key workshop deliverables are: project charter.

The lean implementation method is crucial for successful results. Tenneco's early lean experience showed that project execution took too much time, resulting in the risk of de-motivating people and reducing the credibility of the company's lean strategy. An experienced team from finance and sales & engineering worked to understand the root causes and find a new way of: identifying preparing executing tracking and closing the lean projects. This paper describes the lessons learned and how Tenneco improved its lean methodology.

Tenneco first implemented the lean transactional process ten years ago. One of the key success factors was to ensure that the lean system was sustained within an organization as part of a philosophy of continuous improvement. This has probably been the most challenging part of implementing lean in Tenneco. During the early years of implementation, lean was managed as a top down approach which consisted of: identifying executing and tracking lean projects by the management, a small number of additional people and lean experts. This approach had the advantage of building up critical mass and helped to instill a lean change culture in a reasonable timeframe. But the Tenneco experience showed that even if early results were encouraging, the implementation was not consistent enough to sustain a mindset of continuous improvement. This top down approach needed to be reinforced by a much stronger bottom up approach which consisted of group leaders acting as change agents.

Several factors influence a company working culture including its industry, its geographical region, as well as the cultural and the educational background of its employees. Despite these, Japanese companies have successfully transferred a company’s working culture from Japan to other countries [2], so that only minor regional differences in productivity remain. Such transfer is possible with a strong process oriented mind set and working style. This paper examines the change in a working culture associated with the prototyping of exhaust systems in India. That change required a shift from a reactive “firefighting” mode of working to a structured, projectable and reliable working environment. The goal was to achieve increased in-time delivery, higher quality, greater flexibility, more innovation and reduced cost. The same process approach may be transferred from India to other parts of the world, while allowing for country-specific influences on a company’s working culture.