Concurrent Development Transformation At Varian Semiconductor

This chapter chronicles the progressive deployment of concurrent engineering (CE) at Varian from 2005 to 2019. Varian made a fundamental transformation from a serial to a concurrent product development system that began with a slate of new management. The new VP of Engineering, Gary Rosen, was experienced in concurrent practice. His product development group at Applied Materials had the highest CPD scores in a corporate-wide SPOT assessment in 2003. Gary and other top managers recognized the need for improving product development at Varian and took immediate actions to foster the deployment of CE.Senior leaders promoted a “should be” vision of a new development system based on quality management and CE. They used SPOT to establish their “as is” baseline and identified gaps they needed to close vs. best-in-class (BIC) standards. They trained cohorts of middle and upper managers as a “Team of Champions” (ToC) to close prioritized gaps in practice vs. BIC standards. A multifunctional steering committee continually monitored progress in closing statistically prioritized gaps vs. BIC standards. Leaders deployed PDCA (Plan, Do, Check & Act) cycles fostering continual improvement. Raising the percentage of time concurrent practices were deployed was included in their annual operating plan and reflected in individual performance ratings.Varian’s product development system vastly increased performance measured as time compression, cost reduction, quality improvement, and the development of incrementally and radically new products. Development times were compressed by more than a third, costs were reduced by 60%, and defects were virtually eliminated. The first instead of the thirtieth build was shippable. The rate of incremental and radical product innovation soared. Their market share grew to three quarters of their industry segment. Intel decided to sole source ion implantation equipment from Varian which validated its success. Their capital value doubled annually for six years until they were acquired by the largest maker of semiconductor equipment in the world for five billion dollars in 2011. They relentlessly pursued perfection until they reached the highest score in the SPOT database. Varian continues to improve best practices from their initial baseline as well as deploy as new kinds of concurrent methods.Many companies have implemented lessons learned from Varian by participating in CE user groups, executive MBA courses, and company workshops. The exemplary success of Varian in deploying concurrency has been emulated within its larger corporation and by a rival company.Appendix Table 11A summarizes 10 key actions taken to achieve a radical transformation of product development capability. Readers are invited to evaluate the extent to which their enterprise has deployed similar practices and assess whether further improvement should be made. Appendix Table 11B enables readers to benchmark themselves against 10 practices for which Varian has set the standard for the Best-in-Class scores and calculate Big Bang opportunities.