Walt,
I've got a couple of comments from the blog. If any of this comes
off sounding harsh, keep in mind I have great respect for you and
your staff.
One of Jim's six points for ISA:
"5.Acquire ownership in several international subsidiaries in
global growth areas.
Again, duh. You can't be a global society if all the employees are
located in RTP. Every major automation vendor company, and every
multinational process manufacturing company has already figured
that out. Why hasn't ISA figured this out already, I ask you?"
This applies to controlGLOBAL as well. It is not GLOBAL if the
only big event is in Park City, Utah. Keep working on the Chinese
and Indian contacts, and give them a prominent voice. Try to find
out how process industries make stuff there, and let your readers
know. This is where the world produces goods.
Also, in your commentary about Lou Pillai, I'm surprised that the
lack of new drugs being developed or in the pipeline wasn't in the
list of concerns. I suspect that the number of new drug
introductions for 2004/2005 will be about the same as it was 10
years ago, despite the growth in population, and specifically the
growth in an aging population. Humans have infected the earth,
and I'm quite certain that nature is going to fight back. I'd be
inclined to dump my budget into R&D, rather than incremental
improvements in manufacturing (like PAT). Of course, if you're a
generic manufacturer, you might as well invest in PAT since
research isn't on the agenda. Also keep in mind that for research
based pharmaceutical companies, the first to market wins. Once a
drug is prescribed that works for a particular indication, it is
extremely difficult to convince somebody to change drugs, no
matter what the cost. If you're trying to be first to market, why
would you add additional complexity to the manufacturing process
(PAT) when it could cost you market share by delaying product
introduction?
- Mark Wells
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