1. Known as the business team, the Sun Microsystems approach to concurrent or simultaneous engineering may be used during the introduction of new products and services. The business team consists of representatives from design engineering, manufacturing, customer service, financing and marketing. The team creates a formal plan that is submitted to an executive-level committee within the corporation. The plan, known as the product approval form is essentially a product-specific business plan. Once the team has an approved PAF, the next step is the establishment of tactical implementation teams and the construction of the program’s communications infrastructure (software). Through the cross-functional deployment of manufacturing and engineering staff under the business team organization, Sun achieves reductions in cost and time-to-market with high quality and no major engineering changes.