A company makes extremely fast data-collection products for research labs around the world using Hadron colliders. Its products use extremely fast triggers for collecting massive amount of data for particle acceleration in real time to be analyzed later off-line. The products are complex, expensive, and sell at low volumes. The products offer a large amount of options and different types of controls and tend to have long lifecycles. The engineering staff is experienced, competent, and highly educated, but the product development cycle is long and tends to function in technical silos. Manufacturing is a job shop organization, with a poor shipping performance. It usually has end-of-the-month syndrome, where the shipping profile accelerates toward the end of the month.
Management decided to use the technology to develop products for hot diagnosis of intranets in companies; that is, an intranet can be troubleshot while it is functioning to locate connection problems, without having to turn it off. This would be a good product opportunity and a great advantage to potential customers. The company realized that to manufacture and sell high volumes to the technology market is not within its expertise. The company hired you as a consultant to help with developing this new technology into products to the telecommunication market. You are scheduled to visit with the CEO and make a presentation for how to proceed with applying the technology in a new field, with an organizational structure that can leverage the supply chain for quick product manufacturing.
Could you explain, organizational and technical issues, use of tools discussed in this and previous chapters, supplier management, changes or proposals, including time horizons, you would like to make to the CEO.