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 demonstra ted a relationship between staff perceptions and actual performance for con current engineering. Information was gathered in each company from the mana ger of the concurrent engineering effort, the team leader and a design, man ufacturing and marketing team member. The use of concurrent engineering red uced, on average, the time to market. Companies were grouped into the 'uppe r third' and 'lower third' with respect to overall effectiveness, based on the mean rating or perception of the respondents. Companies in the 'upper t hird' and 'lower third' of effectiveness in implementing and using concurre nt engineering were found to have engineering change requests occur 45% and 27% earlier, respectively, in the product development process through thei r concurrent engineering effort. Companies in the 'upper third' in overall concurrent engineering effectiveness reduced time to market by 40%, while t he 'lower third' reduced time to market by only 16%. The top one-third of c ompanies in concurrent engineering reduce, on average, the time to market o f products by 4.8 months in relation to companies in the bottom one-third. The implications of the findings are discussed for researchers and practiti oners in the light of difficulties experienced by reengineering efforts in the 1990s.