Milestones, setting

Use portfolio analysis techniques to select and progress research and development projects. Research cannot be scheduled, but finances can be budgeted and milestones set. Development, on the other hand, should be done well and as rapidly as possible to maximize profit. 

Sometimes intermediate surveys are specified in the Contract. These surveys eould best eoincide with the milestones set for payment. 

Increased operator awareness can be prompted by use of rate of process variable change, at absolute process variable milestones. For example, devices can indicate or be set to alarm if the rate of temperature rise is 5°C/minute for the 10 minutes preceding a process temperature of 100°C. 

This project was slightly unusual, in that the success and ROI criteria were investigated and developed ahead of the rest of the project. This led to a project that had clear goals and milestones in terms of usability and performance, set out ahead of any review of available solutions. In addition, the project had measurable criteria for the impact that the system was having on the efficiency of the drug discovery process. These criteria were then also used to establish go/no-go criteria for the implementation project. 

Thomsons picture of the atom emerged from his work with cathode ray tubes. It was a milestone on the road to understanding atomic structure. But it was not the only major advance to come out of cathode ray experiments. Almost every television set in existence today is a cathode ray tube. The electrons stream from the cathode and are deflected by electromagnetic coils guided by signals from the television station. When an electron hits the televisions screen, which is coated with a phosphorescent material, it produces a dot of color. The dots form the picture you see on the screen. 

Other very early work includes that of Boisde at the CEA9,10. A scheme of the experimental set-up used by his group is given in Fig. 1. The fiber optic pH sensor described by Peterson et al.11 in 1980 was another milestone. A 2-volume book that appeared in 1991 gives an account of the early work on fiber optic chemical sensors and biosensors12 up to about 1989. Earlier reviews include those of Kirkbright et al.13, Borman14, and Hirschfeld et al.15. 

Fig. 3.6 Milestone MonoPREP module (left) and its parallel set-up rotor PRO-6 (right).

The FCC exerted pressures for change by establishing a set of aggressive milestones that each new satellite radio provider was required to meet in order to maintain its eight-year dedicated license, although, interestingly, the milestones did not preclude these firms from selling their new licenses to other firms. In the first year, XM and SIRIUS were... 

Many of the standard principles of managerial control are of course relevant to a project. Milestones and targets by which you can judge whether or not project objectives are satisfactorily on the road to attainment need to be set. Reports on progress need to be called for. But any attempt at a mechanistic approach to control would be quite inappropriate for ambiguous, uncertain tasks in a dynamic context, when it is hard to specify in advance which elements to control and how to do so . (Boddy and Buchanan, 1992). 

In 2004, a conceptual milestone was set by the US Department of Energy by identifying from a list of 300 candidates the top sugar-derived building blocks (Figure 9.17) [95]. These bioplatform chemicals have the potential to be converted into several chemicals and materials by chemical transformations, and it is evident that catalytic oxidation may play an important role for the full industrial utilization of these building blocks. 

Unfortunately, in many milestone plans, especially in research, we see huge overconfidence in the original estimate of time requirements. This initial overconfidence can be attributed to two factors time pressure and personal frame of reference. If the talk around the water cooler claims that no project with a total timeline of more than two years will be funded, no milestone plans longer than that will be submitted, even if more time is realistically necessary. If the typical time a bench scientist needs for promotion to a management role is five years on average, milestone plans will not extend beyond two to three years. Accordingly, if all research steps have to fit this short time span, project planners will decide to set shorter individual milestones than are actually required. Little wonder that projects are abandoned prematurely or project overruns compared to originally expected timelines are so common. 

In addition to measuring financial aspects, it is important to set up a system to track other key elements ensuring full value delivery, to continuously follow up both on key performance indicators (for example, number of suppliers, quality of performance, etc.) and on whether actions have been followed through and milestones fulfilled. 

An annual target-setting process for operational improvements needs to be established. Very specific targets have to be set for each plant and production unit, that in sum will allow the overall company target to be achieved. The process should start with a top-down target for cost savings, followed by bottom-up action and milestone plans. The improvement opportunities could be reductions in annual plant downtime to below ten percent per year as a sum of numerous measures derived from observations on the shop floor, i.e., reduction of downtime for specific vacuum pumps via preventive maintenance or substitution of a repairintensive pump by one more suited to the process step. 

In 1921, Stern and Gerlach performed an experiment that later turned out to be a milestone in quantum mechanics.1,2 First, it provided an experimental basis for the concept of electron spin, introduced in 1925 by Goudsmit and Uhlenbeck.3,4 Second, it evolved into the quantum mechanical experiment par excellence. From this experiment, we easily learn basic concepts of quantum mechanics such as the additivity of probability amplitudes, basis states, projection operators, and the resolution of the identity.5 The latter concept relates to the fact that a complete set of basis states (i.e., the identity) can be inserted in any quantum mechanical equation without changing the result. 

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