Improving time to market in consumer products

Consumer Products, an AT&T business unit, provides communications products, such as telephones and answering systems, to the residence and very small business market. Since 1987, Consumer Products has been trying to reduce its time to market by more than 50 percent. It has made significant progress, though it is still short of its goals. The experience of Consumer Products illustrates that competitive benchmarking and focusing on reducing the time needed to realize new products can drive significant process improvement. Furthermore, with a faster process in place, Consumer Products has begun to focus on a broader set of external customer needs to drive future improvements.