New product introduction between two geographically dispersed entities

Computer servers for commercial, technical and Internet applications comprise a very aggressive market. Development cycles are continuously shrinking since time to market is key to keep a solid position in this business. This scenario, with the added complexity of geographically dispersed teams, provokes constant changes to design and manufacturing processes; in particular, to the launching of a newly designed product into manufacturing. This paper presents the authors´ experience, from the manufacturing engineering perspective, defining and implementing a direct launch process for new products from the design laboratory to a remote-manufacturing site