【正文】 A with Angel Mendez, senior vice president of worldwide manufacturing, Cisco Systems, Inc., March 15, 2020, (February 8, 2020). Purchased by Benjamin Tso () on February 20, 2020 Cisco Systems, Inc.: Collaborating on New Product Introduction GS66 p. 7 Cisco was a leader in using technology to create information links throughout its extended supply chain. Its Autotest system, for instance, captured realtime data from the facilities of 26contract manufacturers, providing a ―one window‖ view of production lines around the world. In addition, according to Mendez, Cisco used information works to collaborate with customers, contract manufacturers and suppliers in areas such as demand management and 27planning, product quality improvement, and lean manufacturing. Innovating in New Product Introduction Cisco‘s business model called for boosting growth in part through rapid, aggressive introduction of a wide range of munications products. Indeed, the pany brought more than 250 new 28products to market in fiscal 2020. The pany had a welloiled machine for new product introduction, or NPI. The effort was led by a business unit‘s product development teams, with coordination and support from many other functions and groups within Cisco, as well as customers and supply chain partners. New product development required both technical expertise and management talent to understand the market, translate market needs into a product, and bring the product to market quickly. At the outset, marketing and engineering would talk to customers and define the product features. Then engineering and manufacturing would work together to ensure that the product design met market requirements and could be costeffectively produced. Employees from finance would help with budgeting and calculating a project‘s return on investment. The supply chain anization would work closely with the NPI team to influence which technologies and suppliers Cisco would use in the new product. Manufacturing specialists would ensure that the supply chain arrangements would facilitate a smooth rampup to mercial production and allow for lower manufacturing costs later in a product‘s life cycle, when profit margins would shrink. Cisco‘s NPI process involved three major stages: strategy and planning。 data center, switching and services。CASE: GS66 DATE: 06/05/09 CISCO SYSTEMS, INC.: COLLABORATING ON NEW PRODUCT INTRODUCTION On November 13, 2020, more than 100 employees of Cisco Systems, Inc. assembled in classic Cisco fashion: they dialed in from multiple locations around the world for an important meeting. The purpose of the gathering was to get the green light from senior management to manufacture a new highend router that would make the giant working pany more petitive in an 1age of surging Inter traffic. The project‘s code name, Viking, said it all. The router for broadband service providers would break ground in power and speed, reminiscent of the Norse warriors and explorers of Europe during the eighth to eleventh centuries. The meeting represented a culmination of several years of development work by a crossfunctional, global team of Cisco specialists in engineering, manufacturing, marketing and other areas. Just months earlier, in mid2020, Cisco overhauled the project by sharply boosting the router‘s speed and capacity. This would allow the pany to leapfrog petitors and offer a lowcost, powerful new router platform for the next 10 to 15 years. That day in November, the Viking team was seeking an ―execution mit‖ from senior management in manufacturing. If it got the goahead, Cisco would be ready to mit the resources to launch the new product. But the Cisco team knew it faced many challenges. The Viking project would be one of the pany‘s most plex new product introductions ever. First, even though the project had been essentially restarted in mid2020, Cisco was still aiming to announce the machine in November 2020. That would give it just a year to line up manufacturing, supply chain and marketing arrangements—an unusually accelerated schedule. Second, Cisco, which outsourced virtually all its manufacturing, wanted to start making the highend router immediately in a lowcost location: China. This differed from Cisco‘s past practice of outsourcing a plex new product in the United States first and later shifting overseas once production matured. Third, 1 This case is based on interviews conducted by the authors from January 13, 2020 to March 9, 2020. All quotes and references are from these interviews unless otherwise noted. Maria Shao prepared this case under the supervision of Professor Hau Lee as the basis for class discussion rather than to illustrate either effective or ineffective handling of an administrative situation. Copyright ?? 2020 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University. All rights reserved. To order copies or request permission to reproduce materials, the Case Writing Office at: or write: Case Writing Office, Stanford Graduate School of Business, 518 Memorial Way, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 943055015. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, used in a spreadsheet, or transmitted in any form or by any means –– electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise –– without the permission of the Stanford Graduate School of Business. Purchased by Benjamin Tso () on February 20, 2020 Cisco Systems, Inc.: Collaborating on New Product Introduction GS66 p. 2Cisco proposed to use one of its contract manufacturers, Foxconn Technology Group, to build the product in Shenzhen, China, and to give Foxconn a broad role overseeing manufacturing and the supply chain. But Foxconn had never made such a plex