Bringing Lean Thinking to R&D: Jean-Claude Kihn

As general director of Goodyear's Technical Center, Jean-Claude Kihn joined Goodyear at the Innovation Center in Luxembourg as someone responsible for the development of rubber compounds. A few years later, he got an assignment in a Goodyear plant in Thailand, where he got his first manufacturing experience. This was extremely interesting; when you are developing tires or compounds and you see how your work affects the work of others, it is a very informative experience. In 2003 he got an opportunity to become the managing director of Goodyear Peru. When he was the managing director in Peru, they had a supply problem. In R&D, cycle times are much longer -- getting tires to a customer is something that takes days or weeks, whereas developing a new product takes a year or two. If we could apply the same lean principles that worked in logistics to product development, it would give them a huge advantage.