ABSTRACT
In today’s competitive marketplace, product design teams are under
immense pressure to reduce product lead times. For example, in the auto industry,
product lead times, which often exceeded 48 months 10 years ago, are now below
24 months in some cases. Manpreet Nagvanshi (1999) of General Motors
provided Figure 7-1, which reveals a vision of reducing lead times even further,
to a level below 18 months by 2002.
