A Revolution in R&D

processes now so different from before, many
disparities and stresses will inevitably develop in
an unaltered managerial system. The old structures
will creak and strain under the unfamiliar
new pressures. To restore congruence, a company
may need to undertake some bold organizational
reshaping—shifting or removing divisional
borders, reassigning personnel, redistributing
areas of responsibility, and so on—not just within
R&D, but also within the company as a whole and
even beyond, in the alliances the company might
enter into.
The R&D Department. Incorporating the requisite
new capabilities, it goes without saying, represents a
formidable organizational challenge: not only do
they have to mesh with existing capabilities, they
need to coordinate with one another as well. To
implement in silico drug design, for example, it
would be almost essential to provide an informatics
interface between structural biology and chemistry
data. Meanwhile, a comparable reorganization of
personnel has to be undertaken. Biologists and
chemists, for example, can no longer proceed in
isolation, but must now work alongside each
CASE STUDY: MANAGING CAPACITY—EMPOWERMENT THROUGH CPM
A large pharmaceutical company was facing a capacity
crisis. Both development and staffing levels were
under pressure, mainly as a result of productivity
improvements in basic research and competition for
scientific talent. As a key part of the remedy, the company
undertook worldwide implementation of capacity
planning and management—a considerable challenge
for such a complex organization, where demand
was uncertain and resources were not fungible.
Development of CPM had four main components:
• Quantifying capacity and demand. Appropriate
units of capacity and demand were defined for
each function. In clinical departments, for
instance, the typical unit of capacity was defined
as a team of monitors, coordinators, and support
personnel, and the unit of demand was a study.
• Business processes. To exploit CPM fully and foster
cooperation among departments and project
teams, various new business processes were initiated—most
importantly, the tracking and interpretation
of demand and capacity information, and
the consequent adjustment of timelines and
resource allocation. Appropriate linkages needed
to be made to related functions such as facilities
planning and human resources.
• Change management. Since CPM tends to affect
deeply the way an organization operates—publi-
cizing the relative productivity and workload of
different departments, for example—some managers
react more negatively than others. The company
took steps, both before and during the
implementation of CPM, to ease the transition.
The message was constantly reinforced—that the
changed regimen was beneficial, essential, and
permanent.
• IT support. With CPM quickly generating a wealth
of information, some centralized and some requiring
broad dissemination, the company recognized
that its CPM initiative needed extra IT support. It
identified suitable vendors with the requisite flexibility
and pharmaceutical experience.
The CPM endeavor has been widely hailed. No
longer is the question “Do we have the capacity to
do these projects?” met with silence. Nowadays, the
CPM team can provide a detailed, graphical depiction
of capacity and demand in each department and
overall, and an analysis of the capacity impact of
each project.
Looking ahead, the company expects CPM to contribute
to enhanced revenues, by speeding time to
market and increasing the number of indications per
compound. It also expects to use CPM to improve
portfolio management, and to save costs through
more rational investment in hiring and facilities.
53