Honeywell Building Controls Division (BCD) was split after the Residential and Building Controls Division lost money in 1981. The new BCD was created with a hope for a profitable business. In order to get more market share, in 1984 the BCD started to build Mod IV; the great promised product with better quality of its motor and cost reduction. The BCD built the cross-functional Mod IV team combined from manufacturing, marketing/sales, and engineering. In addition, to be more competitive, the BCD dropped sequential development in favor of the parallel development with a desire for faster and better products. The skate was high but the BCD had an inferior Product Development that slowed them down. The inferior product development delayed both the design schedule and production schedule.
In this paper, we will exam the problems of the BCD Mod IV product development. The inferior product development of the Mod IV might link to the project team, the project leader, and the suppliers and customers.
DIAGNOSIS/ANALYSIS
We begin by looking at project team in team of internal communication, external communication, and problem-solving strategy. In the case of internal communications (e.g., Dougherty, 1990; Keller, 1986), frequent communication increase the amount of information directly in that more communication usually yields more information (e.g., Brown & Eisenhardt, 1995). It cuts misunderstanding and barriers to interchange so that the amount of information conveyed is increased (e.g., Brown & Eisenhardt, 1995). This, in turn, improves the speed and productivity of the entire development process (Doughherty, 1992). Internal communication at the BCD was not good. One instance, the project team invited general manager John Bailey to attend a team meeting. John came to the meeting to show his support to learn that the meeting was postponed. The incident was not only cost the project time but also potentially disturbed production schedule since John was a
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