Our People: Ed R. Minnock, VP, Business Development

Before TCC, I worked for Hewlett-Packard (HP) as a Vice President and General Manager with profit and loss responsibility for a $900 million dollar business. Prior to HP, I worked for small and start-ups companies including some of the fastest growing in America.

I understand the pressure managers are under to meet financial commitments. Executive compensation is often based upon financial performance and investors reward companies that continually beat their estimates. Trust me. No manager wants to be the reason why financial commitments are missed.

As global competition has increased, it has become more difficult to deliver needed profit. Cost management has taken center stage. Many believe workforce cost reductions are an unavoidable element of responsible cost management in today’s global economy. The low productivity of most organizations offers few other choices.

Now there is another choice, one that can put companies on the road to Toyota-like domination.

I first heard about Toyota Product Development from colleagues at HP who hired Dr. Allen Ward. The same colleagues encouraged me to read Mike Kennedy’s first book, Product Development for the Lean Enterprise.

It all made intuitive sense; Toyota is so successful because Toyota’s employees learn about customer needs and the technologies that can possibly meet customer needs faster than the competition. Still I was skeptical. How could a very large company achieve four times the product development productivity of most western companies? So I went to work with Mike Kennedy to find out.

It has been an awakening. Straight-forward and easy-to-learn practices such as LAMDA and Knowledge Briefs improve productivity immediately and empower people. The most pleasant surprise is the magnitude of achievements by leaders who have implemented a Learning-First Product Development System.