Time has become a precious commodity, so business leaders who can save their customers' time more effectively than competitors do will win their loyalty. This book shows how it's done. Traditionally, corporate efforts to improve have focused on making internal processes run faster. But customers value their personal time far more than a company's time. Real-time companies beat the competition by being faster and more responsive in meeting customer needs. For example, one company profiled in this book allows customers to customize their products online to the exact shape, size, color, and graphic label they wish. Through lean manufacturing, just-in-time inventory, and digital technologies, customers receive their finished products in days. The book describes how to apply this real-time message across all areas of products and services: (1) development, (2) functioning (how the product or service actually works), (3) production and delivery, and (4) usage (servicing, maintaining, repairing, and enhancing products and services). Numerous examples describe how companies and organizations of all types and sizes are transforming their products and services to real time in many different ways.