Creating a Lean R&D System Lean Principles and Approaches for Pharmaceutical and Research-Based Organizations

The ability to find and remove barriers between people and their systems in R&D can almost guarantee a doubling in performance, and often delivers multiples of that. R&D teams that have smooth handoffs deliver 100 percent of the required knowledge at those handoffs. As a result, such teams do not lose critical information, have unexpected knowledge gaps appear in their projects, or have uncoordinated knowledge transfers that waste minutes, days, and even months every year.

Creating a Lean R&D System: Lean Principles and Approaches for Pharmaceutical and Research-Based Organizations lays out the logic of whyLean implementation isn?t strictly for manufacturing and describes why it can be just as effective in R&D organizations. Terence Barnhart, former senior director of continuous improvement at Pfizer R&D, describes the theoretical and physical underpinnings of creating a Lean transformation in any R&D organization, as exemplified by the Lean transformation initiated within the R&D division of a global pharmaceutical company.

Describing how to merge Lean principles with the cultural virtues inherent in R&D, the book presents Lean approaches that can be easily applied in pharmaceutical and research-based organizations. It takes a strategic approach to solving two problems unique to the Lean field. The first is in noting the key distinctions between R&D and manufacturing, and developing a Lean approach specific to the R&D environment. The second is that it proposes a systematic middle-out (merger/maneuver) strategy to help you initiate and sustain a Lean culture within your pharmaceutical R&D organization that will help you immediately engage all stakeholders involved.

Seeing and Removing Barriers in the R&D Environment. Lean in Research and Development. The Individual in the Lean R&D Community. Lean Exercises for the R&D Professional. The A3 in Developing R&D Thinking. The Lean R&D Manager. Removing Barriers within the R&D Community. Critical Question Mapping. Value Stream Mapping in the R&D Space. Implementation Strategy. The Formation of Lean R&D Communities: A Case Example. Reflections.

Dr. Terence Barnhart has worked as an academic and industrial research scientist, a strategy consultant, a plant engineer, and a project manager for some of the largest and best-known companies in the world, including Pfizer, McKinsey and Company, and General Electric. His professional passion is researching, developing, and implementing strategies to help people create environments in which they and others can flourish.

Dr. Barnhart holds a PhD in inorganic chemistry from the University of Wisconsin and a bachelor of science degree and post-doctoral fellowship in chemistry from the University of Michigan.