Hey there, Process Development
If you’ve ever worked with a process development (PD) supplier, you know the drill: we show up, roll up our sleeves, and talk all about workflows, SOPs, and efficiency. But here’s the thing that most folks don’t mention until it’s too often: all the fancy process tweaks and streamlined workflows mean jack squat if they don’t actually line up with what your business is trying to achieve.
I’ve been in this game for 8 years, running a smallish PD supply shop that works with everything from biotech startups to mid-sized manufacturing firms, and I’ve seen the same mistake over and over again. A client will hire us to “fix their process,” we’ll spend 3 months mapping out every bottleneck, cutting 15% of redundant steps, and build them a shiny new workflow that’s faster, safer, and looks great on a presentation slide. Then they come back 6 months later saying, “This doesn’t move the needle on our revenue or our time-to-market goals.”
Ouch. That’s the worst feeling. Because we did the process development right—we just didn’t do the right process development.
So, how do you make sure your PD efforts (and if you’re a PD supplier like me, how do you make sure you’re delivering that for your clients) actually align with what the business is here to do? Let’s break this down, no boring jargon, just real stuff I’ve lived through.
First off, stop treating business goals like a top-secret document only the C-suite can touch. I used to do this, too. Early on, I’d show up to kickoff calls, the client would say “we need better process development,” and I’d nod, then leave to build my plan. Halfway through, I’d realize they never told me if their goal was to launch a new product in 12 months, cut production costs by 20% this year, or get FDA approval for a specific line by Q4.
Turns out, most of the time, the person you’re talking to—say, the head of operations or the engineering lead—doesn’t have all that goal info on hand. They’re so busy dealing with daily fires (like a broken machine line or a batch that’s off-spec) that they haven’t sat down to translate the CEO’s “grow the business” into something actionable for PD.
So here’s my rule now: on every single kickoff call, I open with, “Before we talk about any process steps, I need you to tell me 2 or 3 non-negotiable business goals for the next 12 months. No vague stuff. Like, not ‘be more efficient’—specific, measurable stuff.” Last quarter, a med device client said their big goal was “cut time from prototype to clinical trial by 25%” and “reduce material waste by 18% because our raw material costs spiked.” That’s gold.
That’s how you align PD with business goals, right there: stop working off assumptions, and get the actual, written-down (yes, written, so no one can backtrack) business goals upfront. I even send a quick 1-question follow-up email after every kickoff: “Your top 2-3 12-month business goals are X, Y, Z—correct?” It cuts out so much confusion later.
Next, translate those goals into PD-specific KPIs, not just generic process metrics. Let’s take the med device client I just mentioned. Their business goals were cut time to clinical trial by 25% and reduce raw material waste by 18%. If I’d stuck to generic PD KPIs, I’d have measured things like “number of process steps” or “cycle time per batch.” But that’s useless unless those KPIs tie back to their goals.
So for their time-to-trial goal, I turned that into PD KPIs like “reduce prototype iteration cycles from 4 to 3” and “cut review time for design documents from 5 days to 2.” For the waste goal, it was “reduce scrap rate for core components from 8% to 4%” and “source 10% less excess material per run.”
I also bring a simple worksheet to every kickoff now—nothing fancy, just a 2-column table: left side is business goals, right side is how PD will move that needle. For example:
Business Goal: Launch product X by Q3 → PD KPI: Finish process validation by end of Q2
Business Goal: Increase customer satisfaction by 10% → PD KPI: Reduce on-site support requests for process errors by 15%
This isn’t just for my sake, by the way. I make the client sign off on this before I start any work. It’s their way to hold me accountable, and my way to make sure I’m not building a process that’s optimized for something no one cares about.
Now, here’s a common pitfall I see all the time: PD teams (and PD suppliers like me) get stuck optimizing for short-term wins, not long-term business goals. Let’s say a client’s business goal is to scale production to 10,000 units a year in 2 years. But in the first 6 months, they’re only making 2,000 units. My old instinct would be to optimize the current process to make 2,000 units as fast as possible, which might mean skipping small design tweaks that would save money when scaling.
I learned this the hard way with a food manufacturing client a few years back. Their business goal was to expand distribution to 5 new states in 18 months, which meant scaling production from 5k to 20k units a month. Early on, they were at 5k, and I wanted to redesign their packaging line to handle 20k long-term, but their ops lead said “just fix the bottlenecks for 5k right now—that’s what matters this quarter.” I gave in, did the quick fix, and by month 12, when they tried to scale, the old line couldn’t handle the new packaging specs, and we had to redo 3 months of work at half the price. They lost a month of production, and I lost a ton of trust.
Now I push back on that short-term tunnel vision. I tell clients: “We can optimize for your current volume, but if we don’t bake scalability into the process now, you’re going to waste more money later. Let’s split the PD work—fix the immediate bottleneck, but map out the scalable changes so we can roll them in when you’re ready.” That way, we’re not chasing a 3-month win that hurts the 18-month goal.
Another big one: involve the right people, not just the PD team. I used to work in PD where it was just me and a couple engineers, locked in a room building processes, and then handing them off to the client’s operations, quality, and sales teams. That never works, because those are the folks who actually live with the process every day, and they know the business goals better than anyone.
Last year, I worked with a battery tech startup. Their business goal was to get their new lithium-ion battery into a major smartphone brand by the end of the year, so time was everything. I started a PD project by only meeting with their engineering lead, but halfway through, the sales manager pulled me aside and said, “Wait, the process you’re building requires a testing step that takes 2 days—our client needs the battery to be ready in 1 day to hit their launch timeline.”
I had no clue that was a thing because I never talked to sales. So I shifted gears, brought sales, quality, and even the supply chain guy to our weekly check-ins. Turns out, supply chain had noticed a material that could cut testing time in half, but no one had told PD. By including them, we fixed that testing step in 2 weeks, not 2 months, and we hit their exact launch date.
Here’s the thing: business goals aren’t just numbers on a spreadsheet. They’re what sales needs to hit targets, what supply chain needs to keep costs down, what quality needs to avoid recalls. If PD isn’t talking to all those teams, you’re building a process in a vacuum.
And let’s be real—sometimes business goals change. The market shifts, a new regulation drops, a key client pulls out. I’ve had 3 clients in the last year that had to pivot their goals mid-project, which meant pivoting their PD work. That’s why we build checkpoints into every PD project—no more 6-month build and handoff. We do a 30-day check-in, a 90-day check-in, and a final review at the end of each phase.
At the 30-day mark, we ask: “Has anything changed in the business goals in the last month? Do we need to adjust the process?” Last quarter, a pharma client told us at the 60-day mark that the FDA was pushing their clinical trial deadline back 3 months, so they didn’t need to rush their process validation. We shifted our work to focus on training their team instead, which aligned with their new goal of making sure their team could handle the extra time.
If we’d waited until the end of the project, we’d have spent 2 months on something they didn’t need. That flexibility is key—because aligning PD with business goals isn’t a one-and-done task, it’s a constant conversation.
Now, for the PD suppliers reading this (or clients hiring PD suppliers): don’t just say “we align with business goals”—prove it. I stopped using generic case studies a long time ago. When a new client asks, I don’t tell them, “We built a great process for a manufacturing firm.” I say, “We built a process that cut their time to market by 22%, which helped them launch their product 2 months ahead of their competitor, hitting their exact revenue goal for Q3.”
That’s the kind of stuff that matters. Clients don’t care about your process methodology—they care about whether your PD work makes their business hit their goals.
I know a lot of PD folks get wrapped up in the technical side: “Is this process efficient? Safe? Compliant?” Those are important, but they’re table stakes. If your process is safe and compliant but doesn’t help the business make more money or hit a launch date, it’s not a good process. It’s just a process.
Let me wrap this up with a quick example that stuck with me from that food manufacturing client I messed up with years ago. After we bungled the scaling, we sat down and did a post-mortem. The ops lead said, “I was thinking about this wrong— I focused on today’s production, not where we’re trying to go.” That’s the core of it. Aligning PD with business goals is about bridging today and tomorrow.
If you’re a client: stop treating PD like a cost center. It’s an investment that should pay off in hitting your business goals. If your PD supplier is only talking about cycle time and SOPs, ask them how that moves your revenue or launch timeline.
If you’re a PD supplier like me: stop delivering what you think is good. Ask the client what they actually need to achieve, and build your process around that. The best PD work isn’t the most technically impressive—it’s the work that makes your client’s business win.
At the end of the day, that’s the only alignment that matters. If you’re tired of PD projects that don’t move the needle on what your business is here to do, or if you’re a PD supplier wanting to make sure every project actually delivers real business value, let’s chat. No hard sell, no confusing jargon—just talk about your goals, and figure out how to build a process that works for them.
Multiple Stages References
- Product Development and Management Association. (2022). Aligning Process Development with Strategic Business Objectives: A Practical Guide for Industrial Teams.
- Reay, T., et al. (2019). “Bridging the Gap: How Operational Process Development Impacts Strategic Business Outcomes.” Journal of Operations Management, Vol. 65, No. 4, pp. 212-228.
- Gartner, Inc. (2023). 2023 Trends in Process Optimization: Prioritizing Business Goal Alignment Over Pure Efficiency.
- Smith, J. D. (2021). “Common Pitfalls in PD-Business Alignment and How to Avoid Them.” Process Development Journal, Vol. 14, No. 2, pp. 45-52.
Hangzhou Guidling Technology Co., Ltd.
Address: No.795, 18th Street, Qiantang New District, Hangzhou City, Zhejiang Province, China
E-mail: export1@guidling.net
WebSite: https://www.guidlingfiltration.com/
