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During the last 15 years, mature industries such as agricultural equipment have cut R&D expenditure to levels essential only for survival. Those who survived did so by increasing emphasis on meeting customer expectations, reducing product cycle times, expanding IT and eliminating non-value work. While these measures made R&D more efficient within the system they have not transformed the existing social system. If the resulting issues of an ageing workforce and a lack of vitality in product creation are to be addressed successfully, a fundamental transformation is needed.
According to Ron Leonard, director for Worldwide Agricultural Tractor & Component Engineering at the John Deere Product Engineering Center, Bob Wismer, director of Engineering at Deere & Company and Steve Bosserman, president of Bosserman & Associates, Inc. the John Deere Product Engineering Center has pursued a strategy to:
* focus major product lines on worldwide markets;
* rationalize major production capabilities into flexible, cellular factories;
* realign the organization into integrated structures of teams, communities and networks.
Despite the gloomy economic indicators Deere laimched its largest and most complex new tractor programme in 1987. The newly designed systems had a high degree of commonalty and production was rationalized so that factories in Waterloo in the USA and Mannheim in Germany produced components for the final assemblies manufactured by each.
When the programme began, each factory was supported by product engineering centres which had a long history of cultural and structural autonomy within...