CONCEPT MANAGEMENT: JAPAN'S TOOL FOR MANUFACTURING EXCELLENCE

There is a strong movement going on in Japan (Toyota, Sony, Etc.) which integrates Breakthrough Thinking (ВТ), World Class Management (WCM), and Total Quality Management (TQM). This new movement has been labeled Concept Management (CM). From ВТ we get a revolutionary way to develop ideas by moving away from the slowness and costliness of root cause analysis. From WCM we get the formal structure around which the ideas are turned into goals and a measurement / motivation system. From TQM we get the process for idea / change implementation.

CM is an idea generation and implementation process that breaks us out of traditional, analytical thinking such as the Ford Motor Company TOPS program, or the Russian TRIZ. Instead, it focuses on forming a purpose hierarchy through a series of steps:

· Concept Focus (Develop a Technology Target)
· Concept Creation (Idea Identification)
· Concept Engineering (Incorporating Customer Utility and Satisfaction)
· Concept In (Marketing Strategy)
· Concept Management (Integrating the idea creation, supply-chain-management, and cycle-time-management functions)
CM is the next wave of creativity and competitive management ideas and should be utilized by anyone wanting to taking a strategically leading-edge role.