Recent interest in product quality suggests that effort devoted to improving the quality of manufactured products may reduce unit costs. This conjecture---that improving quality can lower costs---challenges the traditional assumption that unit costs increase with increased quality assurance...

In collaboration with industry partners, a normative model of the product concept decision process was developed, supported with tools and techniques, and codified as a decision support process for product development teams. This process (Concept Engineering) was then introduced into a number of...

This paper presents a model and an analysis of the cost-flexibility tradeoffs involved in investing in product-flexible manufacturing capacity. Flexible capacity provides a firm with the ability to respond to a wide variety of future demand outcomes, but at the expense of the increased cost of...