Managing Projects in Research and Development

Research and Development is the vehicle by which organizations and economies create opportunity, innovation and secure a stream of future products and services.These outcomes are all critically important sources of sustainability in a world that is changing faster than most companies can keep up.The challenge behind them is the fundamental unpredictability of R&D; which is why effective project management is so important. Ron Basu's Managing Projects in Research and Development explains how and why project management can provide a means of helping to plan, organise and control multi-disciplinary research activities without stifling innovation. Combining research with practical examples and experience from a career that has included blue chip organizations such as GSK, GlaxoWellcome and Unilever, Ron Basu offers a rigorous guide to the fundamentals of R&D project management including project lifecycle management, risk management, cost, time quality and other success measures as well as the keys to operational excellence in this complicated world.

Ron Basu is Director of Performance Excellence Limited and a Visiting Fellow at Henley Business School, England. He is also a Visiting Professor at SKEMA Business School, France. He specialises in Operational Excellence and Supply Chain Management and has research interests in Performance Management and Project Management. Previously he held senior management roles in blue-chip companies like GSK, GlaxoWellcome and Unilever and led global initiatives and projects in Six Sigma, ERP/MRPII, Supply Chain Re-engineering and Total Productive Maintenance. Prior to this he worked as Management Consultant with A.T. Kearney. He is the co-author of ’Total Manufacturing Solutions’, ’Quality Beyond Six Sigma’, ’Total Operations Solutions’ and ’Total Supply Chain Management’ and the author of books with titles Measuring e-Business Performance, ’Implementing Quality’, ’Implementing Six Sigma and Lean’, ’FIT SIGMA’ and ’Managing Project Supply Chains’ and ’Managing Quality in Projects’.