| Corporate decision makers must maintain a holistic view to market respective product or service needs, and strive to sustain a competitive advantage based on global data availability and strategy. Their decisions seek the most efficient approach to effectively maintain a competitive advantage through reduced cycle time, reduced costs, and enhanced process management.;The base theory for this study was Susman and Dean's theory of Concurrent Engineering (CE). CE is a strategic competitive process that capitalizes on the expertise from various functional disciplines of cross-functional teams during the design phase from diverse perspectives of concurrent processes to reduce product development life cycle, costs, and marketability performance.;Research has demonstrated that early and simultaneous concurrent processes have influenced CE product design decisions by multiple functions and demonstrated that training is vital in the roles and responsibilities of understanding to organize cross-functional teams. CE teams derive the product requirements, design models, and ultimately implement products in record time.;This study investigated and statistically evaluated whether there was a correlation or statistical significance between the independent variables of information content, format, and ease of use against the dependent variables of cycle time and quality. Statistics were computed to interpret results of correlation or statistical significance (a) between cycle time and end-user satisfaction when organizations practiced CE, (b) between quality and end-user satisfaction when practicing CE, (c) to evaluate whether organizations that practice CE influence the relationship between cycle time and end-user satisfaction, and finally, (d) whether organizations that practice CE influence the relationship between quality and end-user satisfaction.;Overall, the research results supported medium to high positive relationships with significant correlations in each of the hypotheses listed above. While the findings were based on subjective data, the results indicated that end-user satisfaction measures were similar for both organizations that practiced CE and those organizations that did not practice CE. Findings were consistent with CE success models, thus a potential competitive advantage point for corporate decision makers. |
