ABSTRACT
Above all, such companies seek to reduce design and development times by a focus upon process engineering. They reduce complexity with modularisation, simplifying interfaces, minimising the number of parts, and designing for ease and simplicity of assembly. Instead of emphasising the installation of systems for achieving flexibility, smart production and assembly, they emphasise the employment of people who search for it as the result of smart design. For example, General Electric could not gain productivity increases in manufacturing its CF6 jet engines until they turned to design rather than manufacturing, eliminating valves, cables, tubes, etc., in order to simplify the engine and reduce its weight (a significant factor in aerospace engineering). Thinking that had chased the sexiness of that extra pound of thrust had to accommodate the realities of overdesign and costs. Toyota got its RAV4 from design to production in 43 months, with designers,
engineers, manufacturing and purchasing people all working as one team. Value engineering was used to reduce the number of parts, nearly half of which were adopted from other models. Design simplification cut the costs of cooling-system pipes, indicators and bumpers, etc., by 20-30%. Similarly, in 1995 Compaq computers were using a 'design-for-manufacturing' concept which produced common components between models, snap-together fixings, etc., producing some models using one third fewer parts and screws than predecessor designs of five years earlier. Component suppliers were encouraged to locate very close by and some offered 15 minute. delivery times. As a result, Compaq's costs fell by 75% in two years and product life-cycles shrunk to nine months. In such examples, reduced process and development times go hand in hand with instrumentally motivated concerns for responsiveness to change, rapid innovation, quality as a reference to customer needs as well as minimum defects, and tighter cost control.
