text: There are two main sources of new research projects, namely ideas originating from the researchers themselves ("supply push") and those coming from customers ("demand pull"). Ideas for new processes typically originate from researchers, ideas for new products from customers, respectively customer contacts. Particularly in custom manufacturing, "demand pull" prevails industrial reality. The "new product committee" is the body of choice for evaluating new and monitoring ongoing research activities. It has the assignment to evaluate all new product ideas. It decides whether a new product idea should be taken up in research, reassesses a project at regular intervals and, last but not least decides also about the abandonment of a project, once it becomes evident that the objectives cannot be reached.  In a typical project the overall responsibility for the economic and technical success lies with the project champion. He is assisted by the project manager, who is responsible for the technical success. In custom manufacturing, a typical project starts with the acceptance of the product idea, which originates mainly from business development, by the new product committee, followed by the preparation of a laboratory process, and ends with the successful completion of demonstration runs on industrial scale and the signature of a multiyear supply contract, respectively. The input from the customer is contained in the "technology package".  Its main constituents are (1) reaction scheme, (2) target of project & deliverables (product, quantity, required dates, specifications), (3) list of analytical methods, (4) process development opportunities (stepwise assessment), (5) list of required reports, (6) Safety, Health and Environment (SHE) issues, (7) materials to be supplied by customer and (8) packaging & shipping information The technical part of a project usually determines its duration. Depending on the quality of the information contained in the "technology package" received from the customer and the complexity of the project as such, particularly the number of steps that have to be performed; it can be any time between 12 and 24 months. Depending on the number of researches involved, the total budget easily amounts to several million US dollars.