Organisations of all natures, private or public, profit or non-profit oriented, face increased pressure in an extensively globalised world. Lean philosophy has become popular in recent decades owing to its typically large impact on an organisation's productivity improvement, namely within the manufacturing area. Furthermore, the introduction of systematic, driven and continuous programs, is becoming more and more common in product and process development departments. The current research paper presents first the conceptual framework of a lean reference model for a product development environment; and secondly, the paper presents the deployment and assessment of the outcomes of the lean reference model through a concise case study implementation example. This example will allow not only a concise demonstration of the applicability of the theoretical concepts behind the proposed model, but also the developed tools and methods behind these concepts.