Companies waste billions of dollars every year on new product enhancements that consumers do not want, cannot use, or will not pay for. The fact is that most new products, from automobiles to washing machines, are overengineered. But corporate efforts to rein in excessive engineering costs frequently fail. CEOs and CFOs at manufacturing companies tell the same story: To achieve a margin on new products, engineers know they need to hit a target cost, but somehow they don’t. Why not?
