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Philips: Comprehensive
Lean Scheduling
In 2006, Royal Philips Electronics Consumer Lifestyle’s Innovation—
Personal Care, Drachten, the home of Philips Shavers, found that their
customer call rate was unacceptably high. Like many product develop-
ment teams, they also found that they spent more than expected on devel-
opment and took longer than planned. In a highly competitive consumer
market, those results were a real problem. Suzanne van Egmond says, “Our
call rates were too high; we had millions of shavers on the market—a few
percent is already a lot of products being returned. Even a small change
would make a big dierence but we wanted ...