Lean product development: Create more value faster

Join us for an exclusive tour demonstrating how Duke Manufacturing has seamlessly integrated lean, Agile and value stream thinking into its new product development process, Duke Design System. This is a unique opportunity for lean practitioners to see firsthand how these powerful methodologies translate from theory to tangible results in a customer-intimate organization.

Please note: Personal identification is required to attend this tour.

Overview

During this tour, you'll gain insights into:

• Team empowerment: Successful product launches require strong leadership and high levels of cross-functional collaboration. Learn how Duke implements commercial, technical and project leadership, balancing standard work and autonomy.
• Customer-defined value: See how Duke’s focus on customer pains/gains has allowed the company to better address customer needs (spoken and unspoken) and deliver impactful solutions. The Duke team will share their proprietary FlowMetrix customer engagement process and culinary application expertise as examples.
• Learning and iterating: Customer-intimate product development could result in very niche and non-scalable solutions coupled with long development cycles. Discover how Duke uses platform thinking and rapid prototyping to reuse knowledge and shorten development times while still providing unique, tailored solutions.
• Commercialization with purpose: Learn how Duke’s lean approach ensures that every product launch is aligned with strategic goals and delivers maximum market impact. See how the company’s robust reliability capabilities provide an incredible customer and product experience.
• Improving the system: Beyond individual projects, discover how the company applies lean principles to continuously evolve and enhance its entire NPD ecosystem. Explore its vertically integrated controls and software capabilities, along with a team of developers that employ an Agile operating system.

This tour is designed for lean practitioners, product managers, engineers and operations leaders eager to elevate their understanding and application of lean and Agile principles in product development. Leave with actionable insights and inspiration to transform your own NPD processes.

Don’t miss this chance to see lean in action and learn how to create more value, faster.

The Duke team will share:

• How they have adapted many common lean tools and processes to some of the unique needs of their customer-intimate business approach
• Examples of how their Agile product development teams design products by defining customer value, learning fast/failing fast, and adapting product platform development (like the evolution of their digital controls platform)
• The many lessons that have come from their ever-evolving customer experience, aimed at delivering impactful food service solutions and lasting customer partnerships

Some of the challenges of Duke’s approach include:

• Navigating a complex sales environment, including both channel-partnerships and direct customer/franchisee stakeholders
• Limited general market product offerings
• Mixed-model, high-variability manufacturing operations environment
• Balancing the complexity of overlapping value streams in the marketplace.

In this tour, discover how Duke fulfills its purpose: to Nourish Our World.

Company

Duke Manufacturing has been an industry leader in food service equipment since 1925. For nearly 100 years, its customers have come to count on its team of creative, problem-solving specialists for unmatched customer experience and equipment that helps them be more successful.

In addition to the highest quality standards, Duke's products are purpose built with your applications in mind. Its team is here to listen to your challenges and develop solutions that address your pain and support your goals.

Duke’s success started with a single steamtable and the determination to be a “solutions provider” to the industry. With hard work, quality fabrication, innovation and a customer success focus, Duke has grown into an industry leader and cemented a reputation as Your Solutions Partner.

Headquartered in St. Louis, MO, Duke is a global organization with the reach to support customers across the world. The company has three domestic manufacturing sites totaling 675,000 square feet; two ISO certified locations in Sedalia, MO, and a custom fabrication facility in Houston, TX. Duke has three distribution centers in Sedalia, MO, Prague, Czech Republic and Shanghai, China. The Duke Software Development Center is located in the Philippines. The company has sales and service satellite offices in all world regions. Rounding out all these locations is a global network of trained and authorized service agents. https://dukemfg.com/