IPAD products and implications for the future

The betterment of productivity through the improvement of product quality and the reduction of cost is addressed. Productivity improvement is sought through (1) reduction of required resources, (2) improved ask results through the management of such saved resources, (3) reduced downstream costs through manufacturing-oriented engineering, and (4) lowered risks in the making of product design decisions. The IPAD products are both hardware architecture and software distributed over a number of heterogeneous computers in this architecture. These IPAD products are described in terms of capability and engineering usefulness. The future implications of state-of-the-art IPAD hardware and software architectures are discussed in terms of their impact on the functions and on structures of organizations concerned with creating products.