QUESTIONS: Evaluate the case and propose a solution. Prioritise the steps to be taken in your approach, be systematic and motivate your assertions. When doing your assignment, keep in mind that innovative product enhancement is one of the main aspects affected by the Fourth Industrial Revolution $($Industry $4\mathrm{.}0)$ economy in which we find ourselves now. TOTAL: $[100]$ Maximum length of the assignment not to exceed $20$ pages, typed in $12$ pitch Arial font, one and a half spacing. Organize for Product Development Stevens Corporation is a multidivision manufacturing company with diversified products serving the aerospace, automotive, and medical markets its medical instruments division is located in the Midwest and has a plant with over $1,000$ employees. It sells various medical instruments, such as analyzers, monitoring equipment, and testing instruments to hospitals and medical laboratories. It is a market leader, and its business has been steady. It has a very good reputation and commands a premium price for its products. However, the business is not growing as fast as the rest of Stevens's divisions or as fast as the board of direc tors thinks it should. They feel that the division's management has become com$-$ placent. There are several new competitors entering the market with products that have more features and lower prices. Last year, the chief executive officer told Kareem, general manager of the medical instruments division, that he had to start developing new and enhanced products in order not to lose market share to the emerging competitors. Kareem has worked his entire $20-$year career in the division and is an elec$-$ tronics engineer who worked on many of the current products. He thinks they are still quality products and that the marketing department needs to do a better job of convincing the customers that Stevens's products are still the best value compared to unproven competitors products. He also thinks that the manufacturing department can reduce costs through tougher negotiations with suppliers and by making process improvements. He believes that Stevens's reputation will eventually knock the new competi$-$ tors' products out of the market. Therefore, he is hesitant to allocate any more resources to any product development efforts than are necessary to pacify the CEO and board of directors. He wants to maintain the division's profit margin, which is used to determine his year$-$end bonus. Kareem's approach was to establish four product development teams. Each team was assigned a different product that was being threatened by competitor products, with the goal of developing enhancements that would match or beat the competing products. He simply assigned each of his four department man$-$ agers to head the four product development teams. He thought this would create some friendly rivalry. The four department managers are: $$ Tanya$-$Manager, Marketing $$ Khalid$--$Manager, Electronic Engineering Lee$-$Manager, Computer Systems Engineering $$ Tony$-$Manager, Manufacturing. Kareem has been getting more frequent questions from the CEO about the status of the product developments. Kareem knows that progress has been slow, and that he really has not put a priority on it because he believes Stevens will simply outlast its competitors, who, he thinks are losing money on their lower priced products Kareem had his annual performance review sessions with his department managers last week and asked them about the product development projects. Here is what each of them told him: Tanya, manager of marketing, said that none of the managers, including Kar$-$ eem, are giving priority to the product development projects because they are too busy with their regular work. She said the product development efforts should be market$-$driven, not engineering$-$driven. The other product development teams Tony, manager of manufacturing, told Kareem that he $($Kareem$)$ needs to get more involved in the product development projects and "start knocking some heads together." He said marketing and Khalid and Lee are trying to make too many changes to the products, and that will just increase the price or reduce profit margins. Tony believes that the other managers have no concern for costs or any manufacturing process changes that would have to be made. Tony suggested that Kareem start having regular product development status meetings to find out what is "really going on and see all the "politics." He said all the other department managers care only about their own department looking good, and they are not willing to share information or cooperate with the other teams. As a result, all the product development teams were suffering, and it was getting worse cach day. He told Kareem that what started out as a friendly rivalry among the teams has turned into outright nasty competition. He again warned Kareem to do some thing before it begins to drag down the corporation's overall profitability and the CEO has all their jobs or even recommends selling the divisio