With PDM as the foundation, a small engineering services firm has adapted lean principles to product design in an attempt to reduce waste, drive efficiencies, and deliver better value to customers. When your business is providing engineering services, the mantra has to be all about delivering optimal value to customers. After all, youre not only competing with other engineering services firms, youre also up against low-cost overseas outsourcing providers and what might be the most formidable contender: a customers internal engineering team. With customer value as a guiding principle, Inertia Engineering + Design (IE+D) set out from its inception in 2004 to be the small engineering services shop that leveraged big ideas to achieve its goals.