Too_Many_Tools wrote:

The engineers are TOLD by the MBA accountants where to cut costs.

You've never worked for a company that manufactures stuff have you?

Marketing (NOT accounting) might provide a price-point that their research
indicates a product needs to be at to be competitive and the
design/engineering/manufacuring departments might be given a mandate to meet
that price point by top level management, but there are no "accountants" telling
anyone where to cut costs.

I believe it is you who needs to work in the real world and ignore the
fairy tales of academic circles.

In a real company, engineers are under the thumb of accountants. They
are to make whatever cuts need to be made to make the desired profit
margin. Products are manufactured with intentional end lifes and
without any possiblity of repair...all required by MBAs who have
dictated what the product life and quality will be.
....

Having BTDT (for 30+ yrs) w/ several engineering/manufacturing firms
from very large to start-ups which grew until were bought by very
large, I have to agree w/ Rick here...while there are MBAs and
accountants, and they have very important functions, in none of these
places did they dictate to Engineering nor were "engineers are under
the thumb of accountants." As Rick says, where the cost-accounting
enters the design phase is in trying to make a price-point which is a
function of market niche, competition, timing, comparative product
advantage vis a vis competitors', etc., etc., etc., ... After that, it
then becomes an engineering problem of how to design, fabricate and
distribute (and support) the product. As one moves from more complex,
costly products to less expensive, the compromises to accomplish the
goal become more severe. If your product is a plastic toy to try to
sell millions, the margin per item has to be miniscule. If, otoh,
you're building a high-end anything, that is a different set of
constraints. Either way, unless the product can be designed and
manufactured and ultimately, sold for a profit, there won't be any more
company so the cost point is as important as anything else.

The point is, the manner in which it is made manifest is, in most
organizations, not a draconion "order from above" as you would imply
with an express goal to extract the pound of flesh a la a historical
vision of a Carnegie or a Vanderbilt, but an overall coordinated
approach to how to make the best corporate decisions in a competitive
economy. All information in this environment is imprecise and all
individuals making these decisions are not infallible so there are
always decisions made that aren't, in retrospect, optimal, but that
doesn't mean these decisions were made a priori to fulfill some grand
over-arching scheme. On the far extreme one _might_ be able to find a
company that tried to operate as you suggest, but I would submit it
would be an aberration in general and highly likely to not succeed in
the long run.