ABSTRACT
Volkswagen (VW) considers task forces essential, but believes that a manager of the task force would be more trouble than he or she was worth. There is also a Concurrent engineering (CE) steering committee that meets weekly to discuss problems and developments in the methods. Interestingly, VW considered using a high-speed data highway to connect team members who would still remain in their own departments. The head of the department responsible for CE at Volkswagen research and development points out that “every day we have to think about changing the processes, about doing things differently.” A multifunctional team, with representatives from marketing, product planning, styling, product engineering, production engineering, purchasing, quality, service, and finance, is used for all new model programs. Manufacturers in Japan, the United States, and some European countries in a variety of industries are already reaping the benefits of CE.
