Research and development department functions

The workflow of the research and development department is defined depending on the functions the department is associated with. There are several main functions such as follows:

1. Researches for and development of new products
2. Product maintenance and enhancement
3. Quality and regulatory compliance

Let’s briefly consider each of the listed functions.

Researches for and development of new products
Usually, the primary function of the R&D department is to conduct researches for new products and develop new solutions.  Each product has a finite commercial life. In order to be competitive, the company continuously needs finding ways for new technological development of product range. When researching and developing new products, both the R&D managers and their staff take responsibility of performing the following key tasks:

1. Ensuring the new product meets the product specification
2. Researching the product according to allocated budget
3. Checking if the product meets production costs
4. Delivering products in time and in full range
5. Developing the product to comply with regulatory requirements and specified quality levels

By using VIP Task Manager, the R&D managers can organize the workflow for researches and development of new products. In VIP Task Manager, there can be used task templates for researches of typical products as well as for a new product specification development. VIP Task Manager allows to add new workflow with specific task statuses.

Product maintenance and enhancement
Probably, this is the most important secondary function of R&D department. It helps to keep the company product range ahead of the competition and enhance the life of products. Existing products should be maintained ensuring that they can be manufactured according to specification. For instance, an element required for an existing product may become obsolete. When this situation happens, the department is expected to discover an alternative quickly so that the product manufacturing will not be postponed. At the same time, the commercial life of a product may be extended through enhancing it in some way like giving it extra features, improving its performance, or making it cheaper to manufacture, etc. Many companies maintain and enhance their product range, especially those ones which are engaged in microelectronics sector. VIP Task Manager allows to fulfil this function through controlling each stage of product manufacturing and monitoring task performance. The R&D managers can assign tasks to engineers and technicians which are responsible for maintaining the product and finding new components for its improvement.

Quality and regulatory compliance
Quality is a major issue and R&D department is deeply involved in ensuring quality of new products and attaining the required levels of regulatory requirements. In cooperation with the quality assurance department, R&D department develops a quality plan for new products. When a company sells a product on the marketplace, it should keep regulatory compliance with legal requirements. For example, a products sold in the European Community should comply with the relevant European Directives. By introducing VIP Task Manager into the workflow, the R&D department can effective cooperate with QA department through sharing tasks and projects aimed to development of quality plans for new products. The R&D managers can attach regulatory documents to the tasks and share them between engineers, technicians and scientists.