An Overview of the Case

An Overview of the Case

Millipore, the worldwide leader in separations technology, was in the process of launching two key new products: one a liquid chromatography/mass spectrometer and the other a virus separation membrane. The company had $750 million (sales) with three divisions, which was growing at a rate of 20% in the 1970s, but this growth rate had slowed considerably in the 1980s. The CEO, John Gilmartin was looking for ways to reenergize the organization and redirect its strategy to achieve a 15% growth rate for the coming decade.

Q1) How would you evaluate the LC/MS NPD effort? Which were the right decisions, and which were faulty?

LC/MS effort first originated with a desire to build an interface to feed into the mass spectrometer. A liquid chromatography system could separate different chemicals from a compound solution and the typical chromatography detector could tell how much each chemical was present.

The right decisions were:

* Conventional LC detectors were adequate for identifying a spectrum of 25 compounds or less, mass specific detectors were enormously over a large range exceeding 75 compounds

* It is highly cost efficient as comparison to the performance.

* Interfaces such as thermospray and particle beam had been developed for use with small molecules such as caffeine but these interfaces destroyed the big molecules such as proteins.

* It offered advantages to both mass spectrometrists and chromatographers.

* Two focus sessions were conducted for different decision making units in their respective areas to know the better understanding of each customer interest.

* It was a "table-top" model which was desired by most chromatographers.

* The price was comparatively low so that the more input the chromatographer would have on the purchasing decision i.e. an important part of decision making unit.

* Feedback was taken from the customers of product on size, serviceability, accessibility and integration.

* Strand divided the potential market for LC/MS in two segments i.e. pharmaceutical and industrial chemical segments so that to focus the energy respective to requirements of each segment.

The Faulty decisions were:

* Detector level mass spectrometer had not been tested at any customer site.

* Strand was over optimistic about the product without doing the actual market sensing and analysis.

* Eighty-eight percent of current LC/MS sales were to researchers and methods developers but Strand hoped that his detector -level mass spectrometer would appeal to much larger.

* Much more conservative to QC/CA market which was around sixty-six percent

Q2) How would you evaluate the Viresolve NPD effort? Which were the right decisions, and which were faulty?

It was remarkably a great effort in NPD of Viresolve. It was a newly developed membrane system capable of removing viruses from protein drugs developed using biotechnology. Initially membranes were considered the most effective manner of physically removing viruses. Size exclusion membranes Viresolve worked by allowing smaller molecules like proteins to pass. Larger particles like viruses were retained. The size of a virus is characterized by its diameter in nanometres.

The right decisions taken by Millipore were:

* It providing validation of virus removal and it became the most competitive advantage that Millipore had chosen to emphasize in Viresolve over other membranes. There were two important types of validation.

 First involved providing published proof that a specific virus had been removed to a specific degree using the membrane product in the manufacture's test facilities.

 Secondly, it involved providing a method for customer to test each purchased membrane to assure that it would remove viruses as advertised.

* Millipore had developed a correlating integrity test to verify that a given viresolve membrane would actually work as promised.

* The test was "non-destructive" and so the tested membrane could be put to use with absolute confidence in its performance, so teh customer be certain of the membrane performance before it used.

* Millipore got a major contract with a major British pharmaceutical company

* The technical document of Millipore had competitive advantage over its competitors.

* The company use three broad segments of protein purification market.

* They were worked very sincerely and dedicatedly to ensure that the first industry impression of the Viresolve would be positive ones.

The Faulty decisions were:

* The novel tangential flow technology that viresolve employed was a bit trickier to run then the traditional dead end flow technology.

* Viresolve modules were sold as single use plastic devices and membranes

* The price of 10 -square foot module was more than 50% than the traditional Ultra filtration membrane. Some customers considered it to be too expensive for such frequent disposal.

Q3) In comparing the LC/MS to the