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Associated Press
TRAVERSE CITY, Mich. - Over the decades, General Motors Corp. has tried numerous methods of developing vehicles, many of them at the same time.
The result: redundancy, cost overruns and cars and trucks hitting the market too late to appeal to customers.
With its new Vehicle Launch Center - a business "incubator" formed last year that monitors projects when they are most vulnerable to cost overruns - GM thinks it is on the way to less expensive vehicles, developed faster.
GM's far-flung development processes allowed the company's different divisions and a variety of executives to have a say in what happened at any point along the way. The higher-ranking the executive, the later he or she could order a change, delaying a car or truck's arrival in showrooms.
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