Relating company performance to staff perceptions: the impact of concurrent engineering on time to market

A study of 103 electronics manufacturers in the United States has demonstrated a relationship between staff perceptions and actual performance for concurrent engineering. Information was gathered in each company from the manager of the concurrent engineering effort, the team leader and a design, manufacturing and marketing team member. The use of concurrent engineering reduced, on average, the time to market. Companies were grouped into the 'upper third' and 'lower third' with respect to overall effectiveness, based on the mean rating or perception of the respondents. Companies in the 'upper third' and 'lower third' of effectiveness in implementing and using concurrent engineering were found to have engineering change requests occur 45% and 27% earlier, respectively, in the product development process through their concurrent engineering effort. Companies in the 'upper third' in overall concurrent engineering effectiveness reduced time to market by 40%, while the 'lower third' reduced time to market by only 16%. The top one-third of companies in concurrent engineering reduce, on average, the time to market of products by 4.8 months in relation to companies in the bottom one-third. The implications of the findings are discussed for researchers and practitioners in the light of difficulties experienced by reengineering efforts in the 1990s.