Typically, these are the kinds of questions the financial representative can ask, and then answer, for the product development team. These questions need to be asked early in a product's development cycle and revisited regularly. When companies began tearing down the wall between product development and manufacturing, it took some time to arrive at the point where the manufacturing experts became collaborative members of product development teams. In the early stages of getting together, many people thought the goal was for the designers on a team to have a better grasp of the details related to manufacturing, and maybe vice versa. But things didn't really click until everyone involved started to summarize their needs and views and then share them with the team.
Financial representatives can adopt the same process when they join development teams.
Management gurus write about silo management and the inability of one part of the organization to see or understand what is going on in another, often nearby, part of the company. This can happen in garage design shops or in Fortune 500 corporations. Companies that integrate an FR onto the product development team should keep the following points in mind. Financial decisions should happen in real time. Involving the FR in the product development process means that financial considerations can be integrated into every design decision immediately and adjusted as often as needed, rather than attempting to perform damage control on months' old decisions and suffering financial fallout.