Targeted Convergence

Targeted Convergence is a privately held, information technology company based in Texas, United States.

History
In 2004, Michael Kennedy and his son, Brian Kennedy, co-founded Targeted Convergence in Texas, United States. Michael serves as the CEO while Brian serves as the CTO of the company.

Before founding Targeted Convergence Corporation, Michael N. Kennedy worked as senior member technical staff at Texas Instruments. He collaborated with Dr. Allen Ward from the University of Michigan, teaching the Toyota Product Development System (TPDS). Based on their work, Michael wrote and published the first book on the TPDS, called Product Development for the Lean Enterprise.

To help companies meld the TPDS learning into their own development practices, Targeted Convergence Corporation (TCC) developed a series of workshops to teach the required skills and make the appropriate process adjustments. TCC named the modified development process "Learning-First Product Development" to highlight the necessary shift for organizations. The main goal of this process was to prevent delays and cost overruns caused by extensive rework when design decisions needed to be changed late in the process.

These workshops consistently achieved success in reducing rework and preventing delays and cost overruns for many small to medium-sized companies that TCC worked with, including Fisher & Paykel Appliances, Teledyne Benthos, PING, TRW, and several medical device companies like Boston Scientific. Case studies for Fisher & Paykel Appliances and Teledyne Benthos were featured in TCC’s second book, Ready, Set, Dominate, published in 2008.

Other notable clients of Targeted Convergence include Intel, Kongsberg Automotive, aerospace companies like Boeing, Bombardier, Honeywell, and  Pratt & Whitney. A case study for their work with Pratt & Whitney was featured in TCC’s third book, Success is Assured, published in 2019, which also included the learning from their work with other aerospace companies. To support the teaching of the Learning-First Product Development process through their workshops, TCC created software tools originally called Set-Based Thinking Tools, that have since been developed out into the Success Assured collaboration software.