Time equals money-but where does it all go? Reducing product development time

The importance of `time´ in the product development process has been emphasised by many studies but it is not until this key dimension is split into its various sub elements that the scope and opportunities for improvement become clear. What is immediately clear is that time equals money and without effective management, both time and money are consumed quickly and can appear to `evaporate´. Any company facing world wide competition and wishing to improve their performance should thus pay serious attention to the ways in which the precious resource of time is treated. They should be considering where time and money can be saved through: reducing product development time; cutting the time to market; improving responsiveness; and getting it `righter first time´. A concurrent engineering approach provides a framework for cutting the time required to develop new products and introducing a new way of working that gets it `righter first time´. The author discusses this approach