senior managers could have gained much from becoming involved in the process of pricing and costing a product before it was designed. Their lack of involvement gave engineers and enthusiasts, who were unlikely to see the whole picture, undue influence over the company's competitive position. When senior managers tried to drive costs out of their operations ex post facto by cutting staff, eliminating frills, outsourcing, or reengineering downstream processes, they often discovered that as much as 70% to 80% of a product's costs were effectively immutable after it left the designers' hands. As product and process technologies have become more integrated, a product's cost has become even more strongly tied to its design.