Aircraft designers have wind tunnels to test the aerodynamic behavior of their proposed designs.
The research moves the focus of quality management from measuring and controlling the work processes to measuring and controlling the quality of organizations that design and execute the work processes. Many tasks that had been performed sequentially had to be performed in parallel to meet the accelerated schedule. Studying this ongoing case, the Stanford team used the VDT model and accurately predicted the backlog in the external team supplying the avionics cables, as well as the resulting project delay, and avoided serious quality problem. The Lockheed Martin case study indicates that the level of goal incongruency among members of the project team has a significant impact on cost and quality. This is because a team with no dissenting opinions is unlikely to generate innovative, and potentially cost-saving, approaches.