IBM's world class manufacturing strategy. Illustrate the manufacturing and communication complexity of a large enterprise such as IBM, including its international operations. Illustrate some of the quality improvements achieved at IBM due to the introduction of concurrent engineering Illustrate some of the cycle-time reduction improvements achieved at IBM due to the introduction of concurrent engineering. Compare the Japanese versus the US Engineering change management practices of the 1990s. As you can see, there are several different engineering, manufacturing, total quality, information technology, marketing and other expertise represented in such teams.
Process development is as important as product development, mostly due to cost and quality reasons.
The key to IBM's success was that process design started to drive product design.