Composite forms of organization as a strategy for concurrent engineering effectiveness

This paper proposes a "composite" form of organization as best for reducing product development time and costs. This composite is a meld of three sets of concurrent engineering (CE) practices: early simultaneous influence (ESI) in product design decisions by multiple functions, in-process design controls (IDC), and computer and information technology (CIT). The importance of these practices was suggested by case studies of CE practices in 12 major US companies. The separate and interaction effects of each of these three practices is tested statistically using data from a survey sample of 74 companies. The results show statistically significant interaction effects among the three core CE practice sets. This suggests synergistic benefits from simultaneously achieving high levels of these three practices.