Who we are
The Team at Develop Lean
We are passionate about Innovation and Lean Product Development methods. As researchers, teachers, and practitioners, our focus is on helping organizations improve their flow of innovation and unlock their new product development potential.
Dantar Oosterwal
Dantar Oosterwal is a lean product development practitioner, advisor, speaker, and author. Dantar is passionate about Lean methods and a co-founder of DEVELOP LEAN. As Global Vice President of innovation at Sara Lee, he drove over 30% improvement in product development throughput and increased revenue from new product sales from 5% to 20% through the implementation of lean product development methods. Prior to Sara Lee, Dantar was Director of Product Development at Harley-Davidson where he first learned and drove implementation of lean product development methods. This effort led to a 4-fold improvement in product development throughput and over 50% acceleration in time to market with quality level and customer satisfaction of 98% repurchase intent
Dantar authored the popular book, The Lean Machine, which describes the lean product development transformation at Harley-Davidson. As an avid proponent of lean product development, he continues to promote lean product development and share his experiences to help companies learn and institute Lean development practices. He holds degrees from The University of Michigan, and The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
Durward K. Sobek II, PhD.
Durward Sobek is a Professor and Program Coordinator of Industrial and Management Systems Engineering at Montana State University and a co-founder of Develop Lean. He holds Ph.D. and M.S. degrees in Industrial and Operations Engineering from the University of Michigan, and an A.B. degree in Engineering Sciences from Dartmouth College. Dr. Sobek has been researching lean product development and lean healthcare for nearly two decades, focusing on how organizations can increase their performance capacity through the application of lean principles. He is co-founder of the not-for-profit Lean Product and Process Development Exchange, Inc. whose mission is to share and expand the body of knowledge around lean product and process development. He is a frequent presenter, and has written published articles in Harvard Business Review, Sloan Management Review, and IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management among other publications. He is co-author of Lean Product and Process development, 2nd edition with Allen C. Ward; and is co-author of the Shingo Prize winning book, Understanding A3 Thinking: A Critical Component of Toyota's PDCA Management System.
Jim Morgan, PhD.
Jim Morgan is a Senior Advisor at the Lean Enterprise Institute and President at Emc Network, a research and consulting firm specializing in engineering management and product/process development. Before founding Emc in 2013, Dr. Morgan was Director, Global Body Exterior, Safety, and SBU Engineering at Ford Motor Company during the product led revitalization under CEO, Alan Mulally.
Prior to joining Ford in 2004, he was Vice President at TDM, a tier one, global automotive supplier of engineering services, prototypes, tools, and low volume parts and assemblies.
Jim holds a Ph.D. in Engineering from the University of Michigan where his research on product development won a 2005 Shingo prize for research excellence. He co-authored (with Dr. Jeffrey Liker) the award-winning book, The Toyota Product Development System, as well as several articles on product development. In addition he has developed and taught graduate courses on lean manufacturing and product development.
