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Bringing Innovations to Market Faster
 While Taco always has brought innovative new products to market, it has picked up the pace considerably in recent years.
Since 1992, Taco has unveiled 21 new or modified products. In the prior eight-year period, the company probably did not release more than a half dozen.
It was in 1991-92, however, that Taco embraced the concept of concurrent engineering in developing new products. At that same time, the company was making other significant changes in such areas as management philosophy and manufacturing processes, described in other stories in this special section.
Taco, like other manufacturers, used to take a "serial engineering" approach to new product development. In that system, product designers would come up with a concept, hand it over to product engineers, who then would pass it along to production, and then to operations, and keep it going right down the line.
"Concurrent engineering means we do everything in parallel, so no one is surprised," says Rich Pasquini, Vice President of Engineering. "Everyone is in the loop. If operations is concerned that a new machine might have to be purchased to manufacture a product, then the issue is part of our thought process from the beginning."
As Taco refined the concept, the concurrent engineering concept consists of two levels. A core group of four employees works together on almost a daily basis. One employee comes from one of four departments, research and development, marketing, manufacturing and product engineering.
In addition, a larger group meets on a monthly basis. This team encompasses quality, purchasing, operations, planning and time-study as well as the departments in the core group.
The big payoff of concurrent engineering is decreasing the time it takes to bring a new product to market. "We think we're cutting the time at least in half," Pasquini says.
Market Oriented
In today's system, marketing and research-and-development personnel are not the only Taco employees empowered to come up with ideas for new products. Anyone in the company can submit an engineering project request (EPR), Pasquini says.
The EPR describes the new product or modification and looks at financial factors such as potential sales and market share over a five-year period. It also analyzes how competitors might react to the new product as well as specifies technical criteria such as pressures, temperatures and connections that might be required.
The EPR is reviewed by research and development to make sure it is feasible from an engineering standpoint. It then goes to the Vice President of the appropriate division, President John H. White Jr and CEO John H. White Sr.
Taco does not limit ideas for new products to its own employees, however, "Our research and development is unique in that we are very marketing oriented and market driven," Pasquini says. "We talk to our customers. We challenge them to come up with ideas. If something sounds feasible, we'll hop on a plane and talk with them. We will work closely with them to design a product that meets their needs."
About half the ideas for new products from outside the company come from Taco's customers that are original equipment manufacturers, Pasquini says. The remainder comes from marketing through contractors, wholesalers or specifying engineers.
The Priority Zoning Circulator, introduced in 1995, was a concept that originally came from plumbing contractors, Pasquini says. Contractors preferred to zone a residential heating system with circulators rather than zone valves for increased reliability.
The initial Zoning Circulator was electromechanical, introduced in 1993. "We talked with our wholesale distributors who told us the zoning circulator looked more like a prototype than a finished product, and then we added the priority switch," Pasquini says. "We think it's a revolution to the industry. People want to zone with circulators."
Future Innovations
With the addition of new research engineer, electronic controls integral with Taco products will be an area of innovation in the very near future, Pasquini says.
An expanding presence of computerization in the five-person research-and-development department will continue to reduce the time to market.
"Instead of running multiple lab tests, which could be time consuming, we work out mathematical solutions, write software and run simulations on the computer in a fraction of the time," he notes.
Taco also will continue its efforts to find innovation both within the company and from customers. The company will stay on the fast track in bringing new products to market."
"The Taco management style is really open to going after what you want," Pasquini says. "We plan to introduce some exciting new products very soon."
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