A task force was assembled to determine if IBM should proceed with development of the Proprinter. The group consisted of 35 people including experts in automation, manufacturing, fabrication, printer development, and those already on the development team. They knew IBM had to be the low-cost producer as well as leapfrog the competition on performance. They also had to produce a highly reliable printer without need for maintainence. Finally, they knew IBM had to compress its development cycle from four ,years to two-and-one-half years in order to beat the competition to the market. The team then divided the printer up into parts and estimated costs. They concluded that IBM could become the low-cost manufacturer. They decided to manufacture high value-added parts and buy parts when they had no expertise or cost advantage such as motors and shafts. They supported the use of DFAA techniques to reduce product costs and achieve high reliability.
The product vision follows simple DFAA (Design for Automated Assembly) rules and encouraged the design team to design a product that could be manufactured robotically.
