Product development lead time

Time-based organisations are more likely to meet customer needs accurately by using short product development times to produce new products that meet customer needs. The shortening of product development lead time means that innovations can be capitalised on to maximum effect. If a company innovates through product design faster than its competitors it will become increasingly... 

Reducing product development lead time means that a product can get to market earlier. This has a number of important advantages ... 

Once all technical and pohtical problems are resolved, reactor-grade uranium produced from HEU warhead material could contribute significantly to meeting the anticipated fresh uranium production shortfall. This source, however, is not expected to have a significant impact until the year 2000 or later. The discovery of new low cost resources is not expected to make a significant contribution to production until after the year 2005 because of the very low level of uranium exploration and the relatively long lead times required to develop new production centers (29). 

Typically, fixing errors and redesign account for around 30% of product development time, as shown in Figure 5.3, and improving this position provides an opportunity for lead time reduction. This means doing more work early in the process when (Parker, 1997) ... 

Figure 5.3 Lead time reduction opportunities in product development (Parker, 1997)...

A key success factor for reducing the costs and lead times for vehicle manufacturers, for example, is the degree of integration of the suppliers within the product development process. This is seen as a natural extension to concurrent engineering principles (Wyatt et al., 1998). For many years, in engineering companies, a substantial proportion of the finished product, typically two thirds, consists of components or subassemblies produced by suppliers (Noori and Radford, 1995). 

It should be clear that a complete FMEA approach is not practical for the evaluation of production facility safety systems. This is because (1) the cost of failure is not as great as for nuclear power plants or rockets, for which this technology has proven useful (2) production facility design projects cannot support the engineering cost and lead time associated with such analysis (3) regulatory bodies are not staffed to be able to critically analyze the output of an FMEA for errors in subjective judgment and most importantly, (4) there are similarities to the design of all production facilities that have allowed industry to develop a modified FME.A approach that can satisfy all these objections. 

What is novel is the manner in which they are tied together. In IP, new nondestructive evaluation sensors are used to monitor the development of a materials microstructure as it evolves during production in real time. These sensors can indicate whether the microstructure is developing properly. Poor microstructure will lead to defects in materials. In essence, the sensors are inspecting the material on-line before the product is produced. 

Experience with chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), insecticides such as DDT, herbicides and fertilizers has taught us that extended stability of these products may lead to unexpected harmfiil results. An important challenge will be to develop novel products that have a limited stable life and then decompose so that they do not persist in this environment. Examples are the development of plastic packages that decompose and degrade with time and of agricultural chemicals that do not harm unintended targets and are not overly persistent. 

The study is based on interviews with about 100 selected companies and insti-tutes/universities. Representatives from companies made up 70% of all interviewees. The study initially predicted a small increase in worldwide turnover according to general economic development. It predicts at the same time, however, that an interaction of an increasing acceptance and a significant improvement of the technical suitability of micro-structured reactors (e.g. for chemical production) could lead to an amplified steep increase of the market turnover also in the short term. 

Speed and improved quahty are also important. In the analysis of quinizarin in gas oil, transfer to the automatic regime immediately improved performance. Manual solvent extraction is a very boring task. An analyst, in an attempt to relieve the monotony, will set up a series of extractions in parallel. However, the sodium salt of the quinizarin is an unstable complex. Inevitably, variable times are taken for the solvent extraction, which leads to variable product development and imprecise results. Automation accurately sets the time for the extraction, removes this area of variability and provides consistent and rehable results. 

Finally, knowledge of excipient mechanical and physical properties is essential to creating a robust formulation that manufactures tablets that meet specifications in a time- and material-efficient manner. Excipient selection must also take into consideration API stability and biopharmaceutical performance of the dosage form. Uneducated selection of excipients will likely lead to numerous formulating iterations that require much time and material, which are luxuries that product development scientists do not have in the competitive pharmaceutical environment. 

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