What is the Production, Preparation, Process model (3P model)?

Maximizing Value Stream Impact with the 3P Model: A Step-by-Step Guide

In the field of process optimization and product design, the 3P model—which stands for Production, Preparation, and Process—is a powerful tool that helps businesses achieve efficiency and effectiveness. By focusing on these three crucial elements, companies can minimise waste, optimise their operations, and design products that meet customer needs with precision.

This guide will walk you through the 3P model step by step, showing how it can be applied to enhance the value stream of your business and drive impactful changes.

Step 1: Identifying Customer Needs

The foundation of any successful process or product design lies in understanding what the customer wants. If a business fails to align its production and processes with customer expectations, it risks wasting time, resources, and effort on unwanted products or services.

Discover Customer Demands

To begin, it’s essential to gather accurate data about customer needs. Tools such as Quality Function Deployment (QFD) can be invaluable here. QFD helps translate customer requirements into specific engineering and operational goals. By using QFD, your team can better understand customer preferences and identify key features that will differentiate your product or service in the market.

For instance, if you are designing a new product, you would use QFD to map out exactly what features your customers value most and how these features should be prioritised during production.

Visualise Customer Demands

Once you have gathered data about customer needs, it’s crucial to visualise these demands in a way that is easy for your team to understand and act upon. A common tool for this is the fishbone diagram (also known as an Ishikawa diagram), which helps break down customer demands into specific, manageable categories. By laying out customer needs visually, you ensure that every team member can see the relationship between the problem and the solution.

Step 2: Draw Inspiration from Nature

Efficiency is often found in the natural world, where systems evolve to work seamlessly and with minimal waste. Kaizen principles encourage looking to nature for inspiration. Whether it’s the organisation of an ant colony or the synchronised movement of a flock of birds, there is much we can learn from natural processes that are both simple and effective.

Encourage your team to study natural phenomena and apply those principles to your business processes. For example, just as ants efficiently share tasks in their colony, your production line can benefit from clear task distribution and communication. Similarly, nature’s ability to adapt to change can inspire flexible production methods that allow for rapid scaling or adjustments.

Step 3: Generate Design Alternatives

One of the strengths of the 3P model is its emphasis on multiple design alternatives. Rather than settling for the first solution that comes to mind, aim to generate at least seven design alternatives. This approach opens up possibilities for innovation, ensuring that the best option is chosen from a broad range of ideas.

Key Considerations for Design Alternatives

When generating these alternatives, keep the following factors in mind:

• Simplicity: The solution should be easy to implement without unnecessary complexity.
• Feasibility: Ensure that the solution can realistically be applied with the resources you have.
• Flexibility: The design should be adaptable, allowing for future adjustments or scaling.

By exploring multiple alternatives, you ensure that the final solution meets customer demands in the best possible way.

Step 4: Prototype Development

Once your design alternatives are created, it’s time to convert them into physical prototypes. Prototyping helps bring abstract ideas into reality and allows you to test the practicality of each design. Simple materials such as cardboard and foam can be used to create prototypes quickly and at low cost.

Throughout the development process, you should continue to gather feedback from team members and other stakeholders. This iterative process ensures that the prototype evolves with each round of feedback until it meets customer demands and specifications perfectly.

Step 5: Conduct a Judging Contest

After developing your prototypes, the next step is to evaluate them in a collaborative and structured manner. A judging contest involving multiple stakeholders can be highly effective in selecting the best solution. Invite participants from different departments—such as engineering, marketing, and operations—to evaluate the prototypes from their unique perspectives.

During the judging process, consider key factors such as:

• How well the prototype meets customer demands.
• How easily the prototype can be integrated into existing systems.
• Potential costs and resources required for full-scale implementation.

This collective evaluation process helps ensure that the final design is well-rounded and ready for the next phase.

Step 6: Implement the Chosen Solution

Once a solution has been selected, it’s time to move into the implementation phase. This is where the ideas that were developed and tested during the earlier steps are put into action on a larger scale.

To ensure a smooth transition from concept to implementation, create a detailed execution strategy that includes:

• Resource allocation: What materials, equipment, and personnel will be needed?
• Timeline: How long will it take to implement the new process or product?
• Budget: What are the financial implications, and how will the project stay on budget?

Careful planning at this stage is crucial to avoid potential disruptions and ensure that the new solution is integrated seamlessly into your operations.

Step 7: Control and Standardise

After implementing the chosen solution, the next step is to control the new process and ensure it is working as intended. This involves:

• Monitoring the performance of the new process or product.
• Collecting data to ensure that the desired improvements are being achieved.
• Standardising the new process across the organisation to ensure consistency.

Documentation is key during this phase. Create standard operating procedures (SOPs) and train team members on the new methods. By formalising the process, you ensure that the benefits of the 3P model are sustained over the long term.

Conclusion

The 3P model offers a structured and methodical approach to process optimisation and product design, providing a roadmap to achieve significant value stream improvements. By following these seven steps—identifying customer needs, drawing inspiration from nature, generating design alternatives, developing prototypes, conducting a judging contest, implementing the chosen solution, and standardising the process—businesses can drastically reduce waste, improve operational efficiency, and meet customer demands with precision.

Ultimately, incorporating the 3P model into your business operations not only helps to eliminate waste and streamline processes but also positions your organisation to be more agile and responsive in today’s fast-changing market. By taking advantage of the 3P model, you can unlock your value stream’s full potential and create a lasting impact on your business’s success.