Those are the soft technology items. Intranets, and 24-hour rotating project teams can speed operations dramatically. Researchers, designers, and front-line people can use email, chat, and technology such as Lotus' Team Room to chop product and project development times by two thirds and more. Getting the design and basic product done are only half the game. The other half has to do with getting things produced and into service.
Hard technology can help here as well.
At Hewlett Packard, I found full manufacturing specifications posted on internal Web sites for plants around the world to grab as they need it. They were notified of the availability of new specs and production standards via electronic mail. The information they were able to pick up included code necessary for reprogramming machines and assembly lines. In one example, time to market in a particular industry was estimated at a million dollars a day in competetive advantage. The development and roll out use of the hard and soft technologies we talked about generated 10-14 days of advantage in that industry, with each roll out.