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As technologically advanced as it is, the LightSpeed VCT also represents business innovation: It is a truly global product. The machine was designed with input from cardiologists and radiologists around the world. Its electronic innards were designed by engineers in Waukesha, in Hino, Japan, and Buc, France. Parts of it, including the mechanized table on which patients lie, will be made in Beijing and Hino. Much of the software to run the machine and interpret the images was written in Bangalore, India; Haifa, Israel; Buc, France; and Waukesha.

One way to make distant offices collaborate: Skimp on resources. "If they all had everything they needed, they'd wind up competing."

Managing such a global enterprise can be almost as complex as the scanner itself. "It's definitely a double-edged sword," admits Brian Duchinsky, general manager for global CT. "If we sat around in this cornfield west of Milwaukee, we wouldn't come up with the same breadth of good ideas. But yes, getting six countries on the phone to make a decision can be a pain." Duchinsky has almost daily conference calls that start as early as 6 a.m. and can go until 9:30 p.m.

It's necessary, though. The market for a device like the LightSpeed VCT is global, and that means GE must start with an awareness of what global customers want. Sholom Ackelsberg, a research manager, is responsible for talking to doctors around the world to understand what sort of diagnostic tests they're eager to perform with a new scanner. He has advisory boards in the United States, Europe, and Japan, and is assembling one in China. "We ask them about their unmet clinical needs," Ackelsberg says. One was being able to do something called the "triple rule-out" in a single scan: assessing the three big dangers -- a clogged artery, torn aorta, or pulmonary embolism -- for patients who show up with chest pain.

Ackelsberg also hunts for information about more mundane regional differences. American patients are heavier than those in most other countries and require a table that can carry the load. In France, clinics sometimes do more than 80 scans per day, and engineers need to ensure that there won't be a bottleneck in processing the images.

While the CT group has long had international units, they were hardly an integrated global operation before 2000. The overseas offices each worked on their own products, with the Waukesha team focusing on high-end scanners, Hino developing the midrange, and China working on the lowest-priced machines. Each group created its own technical architecture.

But by 2000, GE saw that rivals such as Siemens, Philips NV, and Toshiba were moving faster, says Bob Armstrong, general manager of engineering. If GE wanted to stay in front, it couldn't afford so much complexity and duplication of effort in its three engineering locations. That meant getting Japan, the United States, and China to collaborate with each other, and with the software groups in Israel, India, and France. "We wanted better designs, faster, and we wanted to accelerate the cost reduction," says Armstrong.

He adds that one of the ways he has forced his disparate offices into closer relationships is by intentionally leaving them slightly short of resources. "If they all had everything they needed, they'd wind up competing with each other," he says. "It's Machiavellian, but I make sure neither team has enough people."

It's 5:10 p.m. Back in Bay 56, the activity hasn't slowed. Technicians are trying to get rid of a few final image-quality problems, sending test objects called "phantoms" through the scanner -- they look like birthday cakes made of Lucite -- and calibrating it based on the results. Engineers in Japan, who have one of the four LightSpeed VCT machines built so far, are reporting the bugs they find to a common database that's shared by Hino and Waukesha, along with the rest of the company. A new version of the software that runs the scanner is expected to be done by 7 a.m. on Thursday; one out of every 40 or 50 scans is still aborting without capturing any imagery.

In theory, Armstrong is on vacation today -- earlier he helped chaperone his son's school trip to an amusement park -- but he didn't want to miss his weekly 7:00 p.m. teleconference with his team in Beijing (it's Thursday morning there), which is getting ready to start producing a new scanner. He's in his office, finishing a Chinese takeout dinner. At 7:04, an instant message flashes on his laptop: "Bob, can you call in?"

He dials into the teleconference and pulls up an internal Web site called eNPI (the NPI stands for "new product introduction"). He leans in close to the speakerphone, and at times covers his eyes to focus on the Beijing team's heavily accented English. He also notes when they seem to misunderstand something, jotting down a reminder to follow up via email.