The Development Factory

"Effective process development capability is rooted in how organizations create, mange, and integrate knowledge."

"According to the product life cycle model, process innovation becomes important only later in the life of an industry."

"The power of process development lies in how it helps companies achieve accelerated time to market, rapid production ramp-up, enhanced customer acceptance of new products, and a stronger proprietary position."

"Although an organization might find ways to avoid unnecessary complexity in the process, organizations with strong process development and manufacturing capabilities will have more degrees of freedom"

"Only through time or experience with the requisite volume of data can an organization identify and solve latent problems."

"The primary task and challenge of process development is to build an organization's capability for production."

"Process development is a technically challenging and organizationally complex activity in its own right and operates in a much richer context than is generally portrayed."

"A successful initial process development project can be thought of as improving the starting point of the learning curve for a new production process."

"Determining the most effective balance between learning by doing and learning before doing will depend on a firm's ability to predict future performance and to identify and solve potential problems."

"Pharmaceutical firms find themselves in an environment characterized by downward pressure on revenues, upward pressure on development and manufacturing costs, and shorter product life cycles."

"During a process development project, literally thousands of choices must be made."

"The challenge facing most companies is to create a development process that is fast, efficient, and capable of generating high-quality process designs."

"Building deep knowledge that permits learning before doing should be a focal concern of firms in dynamic technical environments."

"A firm that can develop sophisticated process technologies more rapidly and with fewer development resources has strategic options that less capable competitors lack."

"No single approach is best under all conditions."

"An organization's knowledge bases evolve as a result of past experiences and past projects."

"The challenge facing senior managers is to create organizations that can improve on existing processes while being able to adapt to rapid market and technological changes."