While I hesitate to use hype like "groundbreaking," we are doing some work with APQC that could be extremely useful to any drug company in examining its drug development and scaleup efforts. Two surveys on drug development and on "innovation" will focus on drug development and manufacturing, allowing any drug manufacturing company of any size, anywhere in the world, to gauge the effectiveness of its drug development programs, at no cost. The surveys will provide benchmarks comparing each respondent's performance to "best in class" [please forgive the expression---at least I didn't say "best of breed"] within global drug manufacturing, and within global manufacturing as a whole.
The surveys are available on www.pharmamanufacturing.com (via the banner on our home page), or click here.
All respondents will receive a detailed benchmarking report, directly from APQC, showing how their practices compare with pharma and overall manufacturing leaders. Results will also be summarized in two feature articles in our magazine and on our web site next year.
AND....If you respond to the first survey by the end of the year, you will also receive a copy of APQCs publication Innovation: Putting Ideas into Action.
The innovation and product development benchmarking project is designed to compare your companys efforts in terms of generating new product/service ideas; designing, building and evaluating products and services; test marketing for new or revised products and services; and supporting and implementing changes to product manufacturing and service delivery projects.
For those of you who aren't familiar with APQC , its research provides a comprehensive, independent source of process frameworks, measures and benchmarks that span an enterprise, and examines performance across multiple dimensions of people, process and technology, focusing on cost, cycle time, process efficiency and staff productivity.
Gaining insights like this usually requires working with a consultant. Plus, having some role models far beyond pharma is probably a very useful thing.
So I urge you to take the surveys. You have nothing to lose but some preconceived notions (and, perhaps, some inefficiency).
-AMS
