Introduction At this point, Valley Manufacturing Company (VMC) is ready to immerse in Lean Management Systems (LMS) and this is the reduction of waste by eliminating constraints and improving the overall efficiency of its production processes. VMC must not stop now and it must go one level higher. This time they must add into their LMS strategies two related concepts called Concurrent Engineering and Rapid Prototyping . This company will be able to reap the rewards if it will continue to make bold decisions and make the correct adjustments. In order to survive, thrive, and succeed in a highly competitive business environment VMC must learn how to increase effective communication, decrease costly mistakes, and speed up the delivery time. All of these can be achieved by learning the intricacies of Concurrent Engineering and Rapid Prototyping . Concurrent Engineering Concurrent Engineering is also known as Simultaneous Engineering or Integrated Product Development (Stark, 1998). The traditional way of doing things – at least in the manufacturing aspect business – is to use some sort of an assembly line approach where the designers are the first to make the first move then they pass on what they have completed to the manufacturing engineers. Design first, then create a prototype then after approval the whole manufacturing machinery is in full gear, then the marketing people are given the task to sell or deliver the finished product to the customers. In other words, the traditional way of doing things is described as a serial development process wherein “…people from different departments work one after the other on successive phases of development” (Stark, 1998). The problem with this approach is that it will take one complete cycle before management or the customers will find out that the finished product is defective or that it was not designed according to specifications. In the worst-case scenario, it will take a long time before they will discover that there was a miscommunication and that the customer’s needs were not taken into consideration. In many cases, the production cycle is bogged down right after the design phase because the manufacturing department has something negative to say about the design. They have discovered a flaw but given no chance to voice out their concerns and disagreement with regards to the proposed new design. It would be best to use concurrent engineering to eliminate waste and to speed up delivery time while producing high-quality products. According to practitioners of this type of business strategy, VMC can easily benefit from concurrent engineering due to the following reasons (eFunda, 2009):   * To Increase effective Communication – personnel who are involved in the production process are encouraged to join the planning stages even if they are not design and manufacturing engineers;   * To Decrease Development Time – due to useful information coming from various streams, management can see the big picture and make crucial decisions that can speed up the manufacturing process;   * To Decrease Costly Mistakes – if everyone is involved in the design, in a concurrent manner then they can see the mistakes in design from