If your production chain is by hand and you want reducing the product life cycle. It’s better you to use a technology approach.

In the 50’s the most of  industrial companies in America, especially  the aerospace ones and the government agencies,  needed  to speed  their production chain up and improve the calculus in the product design. The idea of “business process re-engineering” born only in the 90’s and it is strictly connected to the IT technology . Nathalien Rochester an electrical engineer of the MIT, after joining IBM, before as associate engineer in the 1948 and after as development engineer,  he coordinated the “Poughkeepsie Engineering Planning Group” near to NY and wrote  together the Applied Science division the business requirements for the  “Defense Calculator”: IBM 701

Nathaniel Rochester (source IBM website)

The main purpose of  this commercial computer was to increase the calculus performance in the industrial automation chain and reduce the product design life cycle. It was composed by two parts: an operator’s console and the processor frame. The first one was the Human Machine Interface, the second one the Central Processing Unit.  The system used logic circuitry and electrostatic storage which was based on Williams vacuum tubes. It was formally unveiled to the public on April 7, 1953 as the IBM 701 Electronic Data Processing Machines.

IBM701 (source Wikypedia website)