Large corporations that invest huge amounts of money in research and development usually have strict procedures for monitoring the activities that form part of their project portfolio. Traditionally, these projects follow a linear path from inception to market launch called “Stage Gate”: a sequence of stages that must be verified and approved successively, like an obstacle course, involving different actors and units of the corporation in each stage: Purchasing, Production, Engineering, Marketing, etc. The entire organization, at one stage or another, is called upon to participate in the process by providing data, information, or approving the move to the next stage. This linear path is not without obstacles and is not immune to conflicting interests or requirements that can make the process complex, slow, or even blocked by internal vicissitudes.

METTI simplifies this approach by bypassing stages of a classic “Stage Gate” process. METTI focuses on identifying which of the 10 critical stages of product development the idea, raw material, product, or service to be developed is in and, once that stage has been identified, on removing the constraints that prevent it from moving on to the next stage. This approach significantly reduces the number of actors and units within the corporation that must participate and, as a result, simplifies and accelerates the process. It is absolutely essential to clearly identify the constraints that prevent the project from moving forward at that specific stage, and to this end, METTI has a catalog of common constraints for each stage transition. Consequently, METTI provides a very significant advantage to the corporation, allowing it to make decisions in a much more agile manner and thus reducing the usual risk of blockage.